It seems to us that this flower may have been the American Balsam, which grows as rapidly as any weed, and which we happened actually to see, waving its pretty red and white blossoms in Miss Mitford’s garden some years ago. This was long after her death, and when the cottage and garden had fallen into humbler hands. “I never passed the spicers,” remarks Mary, “without stopping to look at them, and I was one day half shocked to see a man, his pockets stuffed with the plants, two large bundles under each arm, and still tugging away root and branch.... This devastation did not, however, proceed from disrespect, the spicer gatherer being engaged in sniffing with visible satisfaction the leaves and stalks. ‘It has a fine venomous smell,’ quoth he in soliloquy, ‘and will certainly when stilled be good for something or other.’ This was my first sight of Dr. Tubb ... a quack of the highest and most extended reputation, inventor and compounder of medicines, bleeder, shaver and physicker of man and beast.... “We have frequently met since, and are now well acquainted, although the worthy experimentalist considers me as a rival practitioner, an interloper, and hates me accordingly. He has very little cause, [for] my quackery, being mostly of the cautious, preventive, safeguard, commonsense order, stands no chance against the boldness and decision of his all-promising ignorance. He says, Do! I say, Do not! He deals in _stimuli_, I in sedatives; I give medicine, he gives cordial waters. Alack! alack! when could a dose of rhubarb, even although reinforced by a dole of good broth, compete with a draught of peppermint and a licensed dram? No! no! Dr. Tubb has no cause to fear my practice.” CHAPTER XXIII THE PUBLICATION OF _OUR VILLAGE_ Miss Mitford writes to Sir William Elford on March 5th, 1824: “In spite of your prognostics, I think you will like _Our Village_. It will be out in three weeks or a month.... It is exceedingly playful and lively, and I think you will like it. Charles Lamb (the matchless ‘Elia’ of the _London Magazine_) says that nothing so fresh and characteristic has appeared for a long while. It is not over modest to say this; but who would not be proud of the praise of such a _proser_?” Sir William Elford, in answering this letter, expressed his opinion that the sketches of rural life would have been better if written in the form of letters.