The Worcester papers in the year 1845 recorded that a person from this city, being on a visit to a friend about four miles distant, had occasion to go into the cottage of a poor woman, who had a child afflicted with the whooping-cough. In reply to inquiries as to her treatment of the child, the mother pointed to its neck, on which was a string fastened, having nine knots tied in it. The poor woman stated that it was the stay-lace of the child's godmother, which, if applied exactly in that manner round about the neck, would be sure to charm away the most troublesome cough! An infallible recipe for the cure of ague is said to be the following: Go to a grafter of trees, and tell him your complaint. You must not give him any money, or there will be no cure. You go home, and in your absence the grafter cuts the first branch of a maiden ash, and the cure takes place instantly on cutting the branch from the tree. A Worcestershire woman was asked the other day why she did not attend church on the three Sundays on which her banns of marriage were proclaimed? She replied that she should never dream of doing so unlucky a thing; and on being questioned as to the kind of ill-luck that would have been expected to have followed up her attendance at church, she said that all the offspring of such a marriage would be born deaf and dumb, and that she knew a young woman who would persist in going to church to hear her banns "asked out," and whose six children were in consequence all deaf and dumb!