COUNTRY PLACES, 199 
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 asa 
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 doesnot. How 
much depends on custom! The woman felt 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 isa 
country remark that the pig’s foot—often seen on the 
table—has as many bones as there are Ictters 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 fect round your 
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