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The first person he met was Miss Persis Tame, who turned her back and fell to picking thoroughwort blossoms as he came up. "Look a here," said he, stopping short, "I'm dreadful put to 't. I can't get ne'er a wife nor ne'er a housekeeper, and I am e'enamost starved to death. I wish you would consent to marry with me, if you feel as if you could bring your mind to it.
I strove to hide my apprehensions under a holler veil of calmness and even hilarity; I give him catnip with a smile on my lip but deep forebodin' in my mind, and the same with thoroughwert. But catnip didn't nip his ambition and thoroughwort wuzn't thorough enough to restore his cheerfulness.
Thoroughwort is excellent for dyspepsy, and every disorder occasioned by indigestion. If the stomach be foul, it operates like a gentle emetic. Sweet-balm tea is cooling when one is in a feverish state. Catnip, particularly the blossoms, made into tea, is good to prevent a threatened fever. It produces a fine perspiration. It should be taken in bed, and the patient kept warm.
Ann walked with a trained delicacy and caution suited to the woods. The thrilling of the frogs grew louder, and shortly she was at the old lightning oak that served her for a landmark. Before her lay the boggy place where she came in all warm seasons of the year for one thing or another: the wild marsh-marigold, good for greens, thoroughwort, and the root of the sweet-flag.
It is autumn there now; so you see on the cellar door and under the front windows, crooked necked squashes and round yellow pumpkins, mellowing in the warm sunbeams. Strings of dried apples are festooned from chamber windows; and paper bags of catnip and spearmint and thoroughwort and penny-royal and mullen hang drying on the garret walls.
Then he bade her hasten, if she wished to help and not hurt her husband, to the nearest neighbor and beg some sweat-producing herbs thoroughwort or sage or catnip all of which he had heard were good for fever.
The conversation became at once professional after the briefest preliminaries, and he would stand twirling a sweet-scented sprig in his fingers, and make suggestive jokes, perhaps about her faith in a too persistent course of thoroughwort elixir, in which my landlady professed such firm belief as sometimes to endanger the life and usefulness of worthy neighbors.
"Don't go worryin', Mary, an' start to brew him some thoroughwort in the hope of havin' him down with a fever." "I don't hope he'll have a fever," objected Mary in an injured tone. Jane laughed. "Now you know you'd love to have Martin sick so you could take care of him," said Jane provokingly. "Don't deny it." "Jane Howe!" "Well, you would. But he isn't sick, Mary. He's just tired.
Now it is a veritable mixing pat for the autumn colors to come, yellow with goldenrod, blue with asters, purple with Joe-Pye weed, rosy because of the hardhack, and rimmed with delicate gray-white of thoroughwort. These colors it will hold until the maples take fire and the green of birches pales to softest yellow at the expectation of October.
"You'll be just big enough to go into the pocket," laughed Dotty. "Hush!" said Miss Polly, gravely; "you shouldn't joke upon such serious subjects. Good by, children. Your house is full of company, and I didn't come to stay. Here's a bag of thoroughwort I've been picking for your grandmother; you may give it to her with my love, and tell her my side is worse. I shall be in to-morrow."
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