Women, I believe, are born with certain natural tastes. Sally was death on lace, and old Aunt Thankful goes the whole figure for furs; either on ’em could tell real thread or genuine sable clear across the church. Mother was born with a tidy devil, and had an eye for cobwebs and blue-bottle flies. She waged eternal war on ’em; while Phoebe Hopewell beat all natur for bigotry and virtue as she called them (bijouterie and virtu). But most Yankee women when they grow old, specially if they are spinsters, are grand at compoundin’ medicines and presarves. They begin by nursin’ babies and end by nursin’ broughten up folks. Old Mother Boudrot, now, was great on herbs, most of which were as simple and as harmless as herself. Some of them was new to me, though I think I know better ones than she has; but what made her onfallible was she had faith. She took a key out of her pocket, big enough for a jail-door, and unlocking a huge sailor’s chest, selected a box made by the Indians of birch bark, worked with porcupine quills, which enclosed another a size smaller, and that a littler one that would just fit into it, and so on till she came to one about the size of an old-fashioned coffee-cup. They are called a nest of boxes. The inner one contained a little horn thing that looked like a pill-box, and that had a charm in it.
It was a portion of the nail of St Francis’s big toe, which never failed to work a cure on them who believed in it. She said she bought it from a French prisoner, who had deserted from Melville Island, at Halifax, during the last war. She gave him a suit of clothes, two shirts, six pair of stockings, and eight dollars for it. The box was only a bit of bone, and not worthy of the sacred relic, but she couldn’t afford to get a gold one for it.
“Poor St Croix,” she said, “I shall never see him again. He had great larning; he could both read and write. When he sold me that holy thing, he said:
“‘Madam, I am afraid something dreadful will happen to me before long for selling that relic. When danger and trouble come, where will be my charm then?’
“Well, sure enough, two nights after (it was a very dark night) the dogs barked dreadful, and in the morning Peter La Roue, when he got up, saw his father’s head on the gate-post, grinnin’ at him, and his daughter Annie’s handkerchief tied over his crown and down under his chin. And St Croix was gone, and Annie was in a trance, and the priest’s desk was gone, with two hundred pounds of money in it; and old Jodrie’s ram had a saddle and bridle on, and was tied to a gate of the widow of Justine Robisheau, that was drowned in a well at Halifax; and Simon Como’s boat put off to sea of itself, and was no more heard of. Oh, it was a terrible night, and poor St Croix, people felt very sorry for him, and for Annie La Roue, who slept two whole days and nights before she woke up. She had all her father’s money in her room that night; but they searched day after day and never found it.”
Well, I didn’t undeceive her. What’s the use? Master St Croix was an old privateers-man. He had drugged La Roue’s daughter to rob her of her money; had stolen two hundred pounds from the priest, and Como’s boat, and sold the old lady a piece of his toe-nail for eight or ten pounds’ worth in all. I never shake the faith of an ignorant person. Suppose they do believe too much, it is safer than believing too little. You may make them give up their creed, but they ain’t always quite so willing to take your’s. It is easier to make an infidel than a convert. So I just let folks be, and suffer them to skin their own eels.
After that she took to paying me compliments on my French, and I complimented her on her good looks, and she confessed she was very handsome when she was young, and all the men were in love with her, and so on. Well, when I was about startin’, I inquired what she had to sell in the eatin’ line.
“Eggs and fish,” she said, “were all she had in the house.”
On examining the barrel containing the former, I found a white-lookin’, tasteless powder among them.
“What’s that?” said I.