The Herb Garden 
ll 9 
and administering of a love philter, and it was by a 
person to whom such an action would seem utterly 
incongruous. A very gentle, retiring girl in a New 
England town eighty years ago was deeply in love 
with the minister whose church she attended, and 
of which her father was the deacon. The parson 
was a widower, nearly of middle age, and exceedingly 
sombre and reserved in character- — saddened, doubt- 
less, by the loss of his two young children and his 
wife through that scourge of New England, con- 
sumption; but he was very handsome, and even his 
sadness had its charm. His house, had burned 
down as an additional misfortune, and he lived in 
lodgings with two elderly women of his congregation. 
Therefore church meetings and various gatherings 
of committees were held at the deacon’s house, and 
the deacon’s daughter saw him day after day, and 
grew more desperately in love. Desperate certainly 
she was when she dared even to think of giving a 
love philter to a minister. The recipe was clearly 
printed on the last page of an old dream book ; and 
she carried it out in every detail. It was easy to 
introduce it into the mug of flip which was always 
brewed for the meeting, and the parson drank it 
down abstractedly, thinking that it seemed more 
bitter than usual, but showing no sign of this 
thought. The philter was promised to have effect 
in making the drinker love profoundly the first per- 
son of opposite sex whom he or she saw after drink- 
ing it ; and of course the minister saw Hannah as 
she stood waiting for his empty tankard. The dull 
details of parish work were talked over in the usual 
