COUNTRY PLACES. 179 



could not turn to letter A or B and demand information 

 direct about this or that ; you must wait till it came up 

 incidentally in conversation. In one of the villages 

 there was a young men's club, and, among other advan- 

 tages, when they were married they could have a cradle 

 for nothing. A cottager had a child troubled with a 

 slight infirmity ; the doctor ordered the mother to prepare 

 a stew of mice and give him the gravy. There happened 

 to be some threshing going on, and one of the men 

 caught her nine mice, which she skinned and cooked. 

 She did not much like the task, but she did it, and the 

 child never knew but that it was beef gravy. It cured 

 him completely. This is the second time I have come 

 across this curious use of mice. I had heard of it as a 

 traditional resource among the country people, but in 

 this case it seemed to have been ordered by a medical 

 practitioner. Perhaps, after all, there may be something 

 in the strange remedies and strange mixtures of remedies 

 so often described in old books, and what we now deride 

 may not have been without its value. If an empirical 

 remedy will cure you, it is of more use than a scientific 

 composition which ought to cure you but does not. How 

 much depends on custom ! The woman fell a repugnance 

 to skinning the mice, yet they are the cleanest creatures, 

 living on grain ; she would have skinned a hare or 

 rabbit without hesitation, and have cooked and eaten 

 bacon, though the pig is not a cleanly feeder. It is a 

 country remark that the pig's foot — often seen on the 

 table — has as many bones as there are letters of the 

 alphabet. The grapnel kept at every village draw-well 

 is called the grabhook ; the plant called honesty (because 

 both sides of the flower are alike) is old woman's penny. 

 If you lived in the country you might be alarmed late 

 in the evening by hearing the tramp of feet round your 



N 2 



