his character than his legal and baptismal
cognomen, was a wandering herbalist, or
gatherer of simples, and somewhat of a
physician in his humble fashion among the
poorer order of farm-labourers and
cottagers. He was a diligent student of
botany, the botany of the meadow, the
garden, and the road-side; with Nature for
his first great teacher, and old Nicholas
Culpeper, student in physic and astrology,
for his guide and universal referee.

An ancient edition of Culpeper, entitled
The Complete Herbal [with nearly four
hundred medicines made from English
herbs, physically applied to the cure of all
disorders incident to man, with rules for
compounding them; also directions for
making syrups, ointments, &c. &c. &c., and
bearing for its motto on the frontispiece
the Bible text, "And he spake of trees,
from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon,
even unto the hyssop that springeth out of
the wall"] was the constant companion
of Jack's wanderings. A well-thumbed,
greasy, time-stained, dog's-eared book it
was; and annotated by hundreds of marks,
not illegible to Jack, though looking very
like Egyptian hieroglyphics to all eyes but
his own. In the pursuit of herbs, such
as the herbalists sell in most of the great
towns and cities of England; which the
homœopathic chemists will sometimes
purchase, to revend in infinitesimal doses;
which hospitals require for the purposes
of plasters and poultices; and which poor
women of the old school, though young
perhaps in years, are fond of using as
infallible nostrums for their own ailments,
and those of their husbands and children,
Jack made regular circuits into the
midland, southern, eastern, and western
counties of England; from Margate to
the Land's End in one direction, and
from Warwick to Southampton and
Portsmouth in another. A sturdy man he was,
about sixty years of age, though as hale
and hearty as if he had been but forty, and
with an appetite, never very small, that
had been kept large by fresh air, daily
exercise, and a mind at ease. He was an
educated man in every thing except the
education of books, the great Culpeper
alone excepted; and able to discourse on
many things hidden from the philosophy
of people who, had they been brought into
juxtaposition with him, might have
considered themselves to be very much his
superiors.

"What simples are most in request, now-
a-days?" I inquired of him.

"Well, I can't say exactly," he replied;
"but I think there has of late been more call
for henbane, deadly nightshade, and briony,
than there used to be. The homopopathic
doctors"—so he called them—"makes
great use of all these herbs, and so does
the other doctors too, I believe. Mighty
useful herbs they be, every one on 'em."

"All poisons?" I said.

"Pisons!" he said, emphatically. I knew
he would take exception to the word, and
used it of malice prepense. "Pisons!"
he repeated. "There are no pisons in the
world, and everything is a pison if you
don't know how to use it. Beef is pison,
if you eat nothing else for breakfast, dinner,
and supper; and bread is pison, and taters
uncommon pisonous. Henbane is pison,
ne'er a doubt, if you swallow an improper
dose of it; and so is deadly nightshade,
it has a flower uncommon like the flower
of the tater; and white briony, one of the
prettiest and handsomest things as grows,
with fingers as fine as a lady's, has a root
as well as a berry, as is good for more
ailments than I can count on my ten fingers.
Pisons! Look here!" he said, stretching
his hand towards the meadows and the
woods beyond them, "there's not a herb,
or flower, or weed, if there be anything as
grows as deserves to be called a weed, that
you could pluck in a long summer's day,
as is not good for summut or other. Only
men, as a rule, are so ignorant! The very
dogs and cats knows better than some
men; and when they are unwell after
eatin' too much stuff as is not good for
'em, they goes to the herbs appointed for
'em by God Almighty, and eats 'em, to
purge out the ill-humours. And the rooks
and the crows too, after they have gorged
'emselves with worms and grubs, knows
where to go for physic, and eats nettle
seeds. They can't afford to pay doctors,
and they doctors 'emselves, as men might
do, if they looked into Culpeper as much
as they ought. I don't like to hear the
plants and herbs called pisons and weeds.
There's no such thing as a real pison.
Milk is pison if, instead of drinking it, you
cuts a vein open and pours a drop or two
in. Some herbs are pison out'ardly, and
some are pison in'ardly. But not one as
grows, I don't care what the doctors say,
is pisonous in itself, if you knows how to
use it, and the right quantity to take.
Pisons indeed! I don't believe, wise as
people think 'emselves in our day, wi' their
steam engines and electric telegraphs, and
all the rest of the new-fangled contrivances