This widow, whose name was Dame Martha, was a sensible woman, in the
main, but she knew very little about sickness, and believed that she
ought to do pretty much as her neighbors told her. And so she followed
their advice, and got no better.
There was an old man in the neighborhood named Hans, who made it a
regular business to gather herbs and roots for moral and medical
purposes. He was very particular as to time and place when he went out
to collect his remedies, and some things he would not touch unless he
found them growing in the corner of a churchyard--or perhaps under a
gallows--and other plants he never gathered unless the moon was in its
first quarter, and there was a yellow streak in the northwest, about a
half-hour after sunset. He had some herbs which he said were good for
chills and fever; others which made children obedient; others which
caused an old man's gray hair to turn black and his teeth to grow
again--if he only took it long enough; and he had, besides, remedies
which would cure chickens that had the pip, horses that kicked, old
women with the rheumatism, dogs that howled at the moon, boys who
played truant, and cats that stole milk.
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