182 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. | 
day in the present age equally unjust and cruel, only we 
cannot see them ; as some one observed, one cannot see 
the eye because it is so close tothe sight. In the almost 
sacred name of education tyrannies are being enacted 
surpassing anything recorded inthe most outlying vil- 
lage in the most outlying time. One constantly sees 
cases of poor pcople sent to prison because they happen 
to have children. No other reason can be detected. 
Our great-grandfathers’ doctors never uscd to trouble 
themselves to write prescriptions for their poorer patients; 
they used to keep two or three mixtures always made 
ap ready in great jars, and ladle them out. There was 
the bread and cheese mixture, very often called for, as 
the ailments of the labourers are commonly traceable to 
a heavy dict of cheese. As an old doctor used to say 
when he was called to a cottage, ‘Hum ; s’pose you’ve been 
eating too much fat bacon and cabbage!’ Another was 
the club mixture, called for about May, when the village 
clubs are held and extra beer disturbs the economy. In 
factory towns, where the mechanics have dispensaries 
and employ doctors, something of the same sort of story 
has got about at the present day. The women are con- 
stantly coming for physic, and the assistants are stated 
to gravely measure a little peppermint and colour it pink 
or yellow, which does as well. Great invalids with 
long pockets, who have paid their scores of guineas and 
gone the round of fashionable physicians, do not seem to 
have received much more benefit than if they had them- 
selves chosen the yellow or pink hue of their tinted water. 
It is wonderful what value the country poor set on a bottle 
of physic ; they are twice as grateful for it as for a good 
dinner. Some of the doctors of old are said to have had 
an eye for an old book, or an old clock, or an old bit of 
furniture or china in the cottage, and when the patient 
