own homes, to assist in developing the resources
of this wonderful country of India, may justly
look for encouragement and protection.

  POINT BLANK.

  You complain that I am narrow,
    Going straightly to my aim:
  Will you quarrel with the arrow
    For the same?

  Many a bitter word hast thou:
    "Pedant," "bigot." Keep thy blame
  While that sword, and nail, and plough
    Are the same.

  I would cleave my world-path cleanly
    With an axe', a razor' edge;
  Drive my truth through, not more meanly
    Than a wedge.

  Far is wide, though force is narrow:
    Look straight to thy aim!
  Crystal, bud, and flame, and arrow,
    Are the same.

THE BLACK ART IN GRUMBLETON.

IN my rural parish of Grumbleton, there are
many superstitious usages, politely supposed to
be obsolete, but in full force and full swing none
the less.

A musty remnant of hard-baked loaf—such a
loaf as, when it was new, no baker could have
sold, and any beggar to whom it might have
been given would have thrown to the rats in
the gutter—hangs from the ceiling of one of our
"models."

The invalid woman, a very spectre in a shroud
of rags and wretchedness, will tell us the use of
it.  Baked on Good Friday, with a few remarks
and mysteries by way of incantation and charm,
it is all that remains of "the sovereign cure."
At all events, the cure has not been complete in
this case.  The invalid always feels the better
for a little bit of it, but must husband it with
great care, because it will be months before
Good Friday comes again, and if the charm
were eaten up, what help could she have but
the doctor's, and the doctor—only look at her—
has never done her any good.

Now that confidence is established between
us, I hear also of a "sovereign cure" for
toothache, which has made Grumbleton almost
independent of the dentist.  It appears that we
have a wise woman among us, who can remove
the pain without touching the tooth.  The
patient goes himself, or, if he is too ill, sends a
messenger asking relief.  About the time that
the messenger finds the witch doctress, and even
before he tells her his business, the pain ceases.
If the sufferer visits her in person, words as
mysterious to him as "Propria quæ maribus"
are pronounced solemnly, and thrice repeated,
after which he experiences the blessing of faith
in the black art.

Although the enchantress has great power in
Grumbleton, it is a power not to be obtained or
bought by money.  Money would kill her charms,
and, so I am informed, destroy her power.

While Mr. Home and Mr. Zadkiel possess the
confidence of persons belonging to educated
classes, and while the law forbids us to call
such personages by the little simple name that
is their due, there is ground for hope that
Grumbleton may become a resort of persons of
fashion suffering from toothache, and may grow,
thanks to our wise woman, into a Spa that shall
make all the dentists grind their teeth to the
gums for vexation.  And couldn't we bake loaves
enough on Good Friday to enable us to dispense
with the services of the whole medical profession!

Catkins is now a highly respectable young
man, though I have known him to be otherwise.
He has a young wife and one child, and lives in
another of our "models."  The child was lately
taken ill, so Catkins tells me, and adds that "no
doctors, neither parish nor 'firmary, can cure
him."

I answer, that with a mother's care and
nursing the child may outgrow the disease.

"There is a quicker way,"  he replies,
mysteriously,  "if it warn't for a difficulty we are
afraid of."

He is going to take the child some fine morning,
before long, at sunrise, to a young ash sapling
hard by. The sapling is to be split.  The child
is to be stripped.  Catkins is to be permitted to
hold the split parts of the sapling far enough
asunder to allow his infant to be passed between
them by the wise woman, while she repeats
mysterious words, which either he does not
know, or he dares not communicate.  After this
is done, the sapling will be carefully bound
together, and its wound will be plastered with
mud and clay.  If the tree grows, the child
certainly recovers; if it dies, or is cut down,
the disease returns, and will remain for life.
"And here," says Catkins, "is the deuce of it
all.  All the sticks in these parts is wanted for
hop-poles every ten or twelve year, and the cure
is never safe, because folks won't let 'em be and
grow into timber."

"How can you believe such nonsense, James
Catkins?"

"I doan't say I do believe it exactly; it's a
'speriment.  If Polly gets better, I believe it;
if the tree lives and she doan't, I shouldn't
believe it no more nor nothin' at all."

It further appears that Catkins is suffering
from a similar complaint, and he has more than
half a mind—at all events, his old mother
advises him—to undergo the same process, but
then he adds, as I turn away in disgust,  "it's
cutting down them hop-poles that's the mischief
of it."

Here, again, is another very respectable tradeswoman,
who has lost the middle finger of her
right hand.  There was a swelling.  The medical
man wished to remove the top to save the rest,
and so she was persuaded to discard the skill of
the doctor for the charms of the witch.
Notwithstanding fomentations and poultices, which