100 Belief in Herbs. 



The very quany is pointed out where this extraordi- 

 nary phenomenon took place. It is curious how a 

 story of this kind, something like which is, I think, 

 told of the Hartz Mountains, should have got local- 

 ized in a limestone quarry so far apart in distance 

 and character. How well I remember the ancient 

 laborer who told me this legend as a boy ! It is easy 

 to philosophize on it now, and speculate upon the 

 genesis of the tale, which may have originated in a 

 cavernous hollow resounding to the tools ; but then 

 it was a realhy, and I recollect always giving a wide 

 berth to that quarry at night. As the old man told 

 it, it was indeed hardly a legend ; for he could dis- 

 close every detail, and what has here occupied a few 

 sentences took him the best part of an hour to relate. 



Now and then the western clouds after the sunset 

 assume a shape resembling that of a vast extended 

 wing, as of a gigantic bird in full flight the extreme 

 tip nearly reaching the zenith, the body of the bird 

 just below the horizon. The resemblance is some- 

 times so perfect that the layers of feathers are trace- 

 able by an imaginative eye. This, the old folk say, 

 is the wing of the Archangel Michael, and it bodes 

 no good to the evil ones among the nations, for he is 

 on his way to execute a tiread command. 



Herbs are still believed in implicitly by some. 

 Not long since I met a laborer, one of the better 

 class too, whom I had known previously, and now 

 found deeply depressed because of the death of a son. 

 The poor fellow had had every attention ; the clergy- 

 man had exerted himself, and wine and nourishing 

 luxuries had not been spared, nor the best of medical 

 advice. That he admitted, but still regretted one 



