knew that child to tell a lie,
and she says you struck her."

It was a new experience--the first time I had ever known my word to
be questioned.

During the day one thought dominated all others: where are those
treasures of literature which, rich though they are, fail to satisfy
their owner's voracious intellectual appetite? As houses were then
built, the living and sleeping rooms were all on one main floor.
Here they comprised a kitchen, dining room, medicine room, a little
parlor, and two small sleeping rooms, one for the doctor and one
for myself. Before many hours I had managed to see the interior of
every one except the doctor's bedroom, and there was not a sign of a
book unless such common ones as a dictionary or a Bible. What could
it all mean?

Next day the darkness was illuminated, at least temporarily,
by a ray of light. The doctor had been absent most of the day
before on a visit to some distant patient. Now he came to me
and told me he wanted to show me how to make bilious powders.
Several trays of dried herbs had been drying under the kitchen
stove until their leaves were quite brittle. He took these and I
followed him to the narrow stairway, which we slowly ascended, he
going ahead. As I mounted I looked for a solution of the difficulty.
Here upstairs must be where the doctor kept his books. At each step
I peered eagerly ahead until my head was on a level with the floor.
Rafters and a window at the other end had successively come into
view and now the whole interior was visible. Nothing was there but
a loft, at the further end of which was a bed for the housemaid.
The floor was strewn with dried plants. Nothing else was visible.
The disillusion seemed complete. My heart sank within me.

On one side of the stairway at a level with the floor was screwed a
large coffee mill. The doctor spread a sheet of paper out on the
floor on the other side, and laid a line sieve upon it. Then he
showed me how to grind the dry and brittle leaves in the coffee mill,
put them into the sieve, and sift them on the paper. This work
had a scientific and professional look which infused a glimmer of
light into the Cimmerian darkness. The bilious powders were made of
the leaves of four plants familiarly known as spearmint, sunflower,
smartweed, and yarrow. In his practice a heaping teaspoonful of the
pulverized leaves was stirred in a cup of warm water and the grosser
parts were allowed to settle, while the pa