Page:Letters of Life.djvu/398

386 culture in Kent, the ancient Cantrum of England. Mine are carefully spread and dried, for they enter into the domestic pharmacopœia. A slight infusion of them warm, at retiring, propitiates the visits of Morpheus, as many a nervous person can testify; "while taken cold, an hour before the principal meal, it exercises a strengthening influence on the digestive organs, being both a sedative and tonic.

By the side of this Humulus Lapulus, as the botanists call it, flourishes a less aspiring plant, the Sambucus Nigra, or common elder. Its large masses of white blossoms, which beautify so many wild and waste places in June, are saved for medicinal purposes, having purifying and alterative powers; while some sister housekeepers, more enterprising than myself, compound from its autumnal berries a kind of wine, which they pronounce both salubrious and palatable.

At the feet of these patronizing herbs, and in and out among the grass-blades, a few strawberries run, now and then hiding themselves, as if ashamed of their semi-barbarous state, and anon exultant, as though they heard the almost irreverent praise of Sidney Smith.

I have told you that I have no garden. Nevertheless, I plant a few rows of beans, which are the delight of my eyes; and in winter, sow tomato seeds in a box of rich earth, which, being early intrusted to my rather