Fennewick
Fennewick
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Fennewick - Section 04
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.
Old Hans very seldom came to see her now, and she took no more of his medicines. It was of no use, and she had paid him every penny that she had to spare, besides a great many other things in the way of little odds and ends that lay about the house. But when Patsey stopped in, one afternoon, a month or two after she had brought the first bunch of flowers, she said to the widow:
Some other ants once found a cockchafer's wing, which they thought would be a capital thing to dry for winter, and they endeavored to get it into the entrance of their hill. But it was too big. So they drew it out and made the hole larger. Then they tried again, but the wing was still too wide. They turned it and made several efforts to get it in sideways, and upside down, but it was impossible; so they lifted it away, and again enlarged the hole. But the wing would not yet go in. Without losing patience, they once more went to work, and, after having labored for three hours and a half, they at last had the pleasure of seeing their dried wing safely pulled into their store-room.
But fleas have been taught to perform their tricks of strength and activity in an orderly and highly proper manner. They have been trained to go through military exercises, carrying little sticks for guns; to work and pull about small cannon, although the accounts say nothing about their firing them off; and, what seems the most wonderful of all, two fleas have been harnessed to a little coach while another one sat on the box and drove! The whole of this wonderful exhibition was so small that a microscope had to be used in order to properly observe it.
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