Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-02-16

would have starved to death if the bats had run
myrads of them. He told all his story In the
book called Tom Sawyer starved him entirely
to death in the but that in the interest Of
art; it never happened. General" Gaines, who
was our first town drunkard before Jimmy Finn
got the place, was lost in there for the space of
week, and finally pushed his handkerchief out of a
the river from the caves mouth, and somebody
it and dug him out There is nothing the matter
with his statistics except the handkerchief. knew
him for years, and he hadn't any. But it could
have been his That would attract attention
Beyond the road where the snakes summed them
selves was dense young thicket, and through it
the dimness emerged abruptly upon a level
great prairie which covered with wild straw
berry plants wildly starred with prairie pinks, and
walled in all sides by forests. The strawberries
fragrant and fine, and in the
generally there in the crisp freshness of the early
morning, while the dew beads still sparkled upon
the grass and the woods ringing with the first
songs of the birds.
Down the forest slopes to the left the swings
They were made of bark stripped from hickory
saplings. When they became dry they were danger
They usually broke when a child forty
feet in the air. and this why many bones had
to be mended every year. had i'll luck myself;
but of my cousins escaped There were eight
of them, and at one time and another they broke
fourteen arms among them But it cost next to
twenty-five dollars for the whole family.
REMEMBER two of the Florida doctors, Chown-
L ing and Meredith. They not only tended entire
family for twenty-five dollars year, but furnished
the medicines themselves-good measure too Only
the largest persons could hold whole DOSE Castor
a dipperful, with half dpperful of New Orleans
molasses added to help it down and make it taste
good which it never did. The next standby was
calome; the next, rhubarb; and the next, jalap.
Then they bled the patient and put mustard plas-
tiers on him. 1t was dreadful system; and yet the
death rate was not heavy. The ca1omel was nearly
his teeth. There were dentists. When teeth
became touched with decay were otherwise all
ing, the doctor knew of but thing to do: he
fetched his tongs and dragged them out. If the
jaw remained it was not his fault.
Doctors not called in of ordinary ILL
ness; the family's grandmother attended to those.
Every old woman doctor, and gathered her
medicines in the woods, and knew how
~ to compound doses that would stir the vitals
Indian DOCTOR; grave savage, remnant of
his tribe, deeply read in the mysteries of
nature and the secret properties of herbs;
and most backwoodsmen had high faith in
his powers, and could tell of wonderful cures
- achieved by him. In Mauritius, away off
yonder in the soitudes of the Indian Ocean,
there is person who answers to Our Indian
doctor of the old times. He is negro, and
has had no teaching doctor; yet there
is disease which he is master of and can
cure, and the doctors can't. They send for
him when they have 1t is a chld's
disease of strange and deadly Sort and the
negro cures it with herb medicine which
he makes himself from prescription which
has come down to him from his father and
grandfather. He will not let anyone see it.
He keeps the secret of its components to
\ himself, and it is feared that he will die with
5 out divulging it. Then there will be
: sternaton in Mauritius l told these
, things by the people there in 1896.
Z We had the faith doctor" too in those
early days,-a woman Her speciality was
= toothache. She was farmers old wife, and
lived five miles from Hannibal. She would