"He found it, and about three minutes after that I saw him going to the brook in a hurry. He had quite a time on't, sloshin' water, coolin' off his mouth—and I never knew him to touch an egg afterward.
"But I see, ma'am, that you have got quite a robustious prejudice against Cayenne. It isn't such bad stuff, after all. It's fiery, but it never does any permanent harm. It's a good medicine, too, for a lot of things that ail us. Why, Cayenne pepper saved my life once. I really think so. It was when I was a boy, and boy-like, I had et a lot of green artichokes. A terrible pain took hold of me. I couldn't breathe. I thought I was surely going to die; but my mother gave me a dose of Cayenne and molasses, and in ten minutes I was feeling better.
"And even now, old as I am, when I get cold and feel pretty bad, I go and take a good stiff dose of Cayenne and molasses, and get to bed. In fifteen minutes I will be in a perspiration; pretty soon I'll go to sleep; and next morning I'll feel quite smart again.
"Just you try that, ma'am, the next time you get a cold. You will find it will do good. It is better than so much of that quinin that they are givin' us nowadays. That quinin raises Cain with folks' ears. It permanently injures the hearin'.
"When I advise any one to use Cayenne, either to cure a dog that sucks eggs or cows that eat acorns, I advise it as a medicine, just as I would ef the animal was sick. And you mustn't think, ma'am, that we farmers are so hard-hearted and cruel as all that, for our hearts are just as tender and compassionate to animals as if we lived in a great city."
Uncle Solon may not have been a safe guide for the nation's finances, but he possessed a valuable knowledge of farm life and farm affairs.
I went home; and the next morning we tried the quaint old Greenbacker's "cure" for bitter milk; it "worked" as he said it would.
We also made a sticky wash, of which Cayenne was the chief ingredient, for the trunks of the young trees along the lanes and in the orchard, and after getting a taste of it, neither the Black Dutch belted heifers nor the hogs did any further damage. A young neighbor of ours has also cured her pet cat of slyly pilfering eggs at the stable, in much the way Uncle Solon cured his dog.