Old Time Gardens 
1 1 8 
Wintergreen, which was universally made into tea or 
oil for rheumatism, appears now in prescriptions for 
the same disease under the name of Gaultheria. 
Peppermint, once a sovereign cure for heartburn 
and “ nuralogy,” serves us decked with the title of 
Menthol. “ Saffern-tea ” never has lost its good 
standing as a cure for the “jarnders.” In coun- 
try communities scores of old herbs and simples 
are used in vast amounts ; and in every village 
is some aged man or woman wise in gathering, dis- 
tilling, and compounding these “ potent and parable 
medicines,” to use Cotton Mather’s words. One of 
these gatherers of simples is shown opposite page 
120, a quaint old figure, seen afar as we drive through 
country by-roads, as she bends over some dense 
clump of weeds in distant meadow or pasture. 
In our large city markets bunches of sweet herbs 
are still sold ; and within a year I have seen men 
passing my city home selling great bunches of Cat- 
nip and Mint, in the spring, and dried Sage, Marjo- 
ram, and other herbs in the autumn. In one case 
I noted that it was the same man, unmistakably a 
real countryman, whom I had noted selling quail on 
the street, when he had about forty as fine quail as 
I ever saw. I never saw him sell quail, nor herbs. 
I think his customers are probably all foreigners — 
emigrants from continental Europe, chiefly Poles and 
Italians. 
The use of herbs as component parts of love 
philters and charms is a most ancient custom, and 
lingered into the nineteenth century in country com- 
munities. I knew but one case of the manufacture 
