“Will you bring me one next winter, aunt?” Margie asked.
“N-no. I’d rather hem cloths, I b’lieve: but I’d like to try it on my doll dishes.”
Once he sang of summer, Nothing but the summer; Now he sings of winter, Of winter bleak and drear: Just because there’s fallen A snow-flake on his forehead, He must go and fancy ’Tis winter all the year! —Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
We were at breakfast one morning, when a loitering breeze from the woods filled the room with delicious aroma. The graceful spring flowers and the wild fruit trees were just beginning a life of promise.
“There’s sweet smelling fern in that,” exclaimed Charley, sniffing critically.
“I think it’s from the crab-apple trees by the chalybeate spring,” said grandma.
“No, it’s the chicksaw plums by the creek,” cried Margaret.
“It ’mells ’ike ’bacco moss to me,” murmured Pearl, touching the tip of her nose with her dainty forefinger.
“I know what it is,” asserted Grace; “it’s the wild cherry tree; it’s full of blossoms.”
“There’s Ginseng in it somewhere,” laughingly commented papa.
“Ginseng?” cried the children. “What’s that?”
“The name of a plant in the wood. The word is supposed to be of Chinese origin. The Iroquois called the root garentoqucu, literally, legs and thighs separated. The plant belongs to the genus Pauax, and it is a great medicine with the Chinese. We export it in large quantities, but northern Asia grows it as well as we.”
“Yes, I saw some yesterday near the tobacco-plant bed.”
“Can we go for some as soon as we have finished breakfast?”
“Yes, and I will go with you. A walk through the wood will be good for us; I feel like I had slept a hundred years and been one of Tennyson’s characters in The Day Dream.”
“And I,” said the artist, “will take my pencil and sketching block.”
Six plants were found, all having good long roots.
“What you have now would cost you a quarter of a dollar if you were buying it,” said papa.
“One could live very well then, by gathering Ginseng to sell,” commented practical Charley.
“Why, yes, you remember old Uncle Baskett, the colored doctor?”
“Yes,” said Margaret. “He cured toothache by hanging a rabbit’s foot about your neck.”
“And fits with a four-leafed clover,” cried Gracie.
“He made his living,” went on papa, “after he was freed, by collecting the roots of Ginseng, Calamus and other medicinal plants, and it was then, too, he gained his almost marvelous knowledge of herbs, becoming famous, even among the white people, for his success in curing certain diseases.”