In our large city markets bunches of sweet herbs are still sold; and within a year I have seen men passing my city home selling great bunches of Catnip and Mint, in the spring, and dried Sage, Marjoram, and other herbs in the autumn. In one case I noted that it was the same man, unmistakably a real countryman, whom I had noted selling quail on the street, when he had about forty as fine quail as I ever saw. I never saw him sell quail, nor herbs. I think his customers are probably all foreigners--emigrants from continental Europe, chiefly Poles and Italians. The use of herbs as component parts of love philters and charms is a most ancient custom, and lingered into the nineteenth century in country communities. I knew but one case of the manufacture and administering of a love philter, and it was by a person to whom such an action would seem utterly incongruous. A very gentle, retiring girl in a New England town eighty years ago was deeply in love with the minister whose church she attended, and of which her father was the deacon. The parson was a widower, nearly of middle age, and exceedingly sombre and reserved in character--saddened, doubtless, by the loss of his two young children and his wife through that scourge of New England, consumption; but he was very handsome, and even his sadness had its charm. His house, had burned down as an additional misfortune, and he lived in lodgings with two elderly women of his congregation. Therefore church meetings and various gatherings of committees were held at the deacon's house, and the deacon's daughter saw him day after day, and grew more desperately in love. Desperate certainly she was when she dared even to think of giving a love philter to a minister. The recipe was clearly printed on the last page of an old dream book; and she carried it out in every detail. It was easy to introduce it into the mug of flip which was always brewed for the meeting, and the parson drank it down abstractedly, thinking that it seemed more bitter than usual, but showing no sign of this thought. The philter was promised to have effect in making the drinker love profoundly the first person of opposite sex whom he or she saw after drinking it; and of course the minister saw Hannah as she stood waiting for his empty tankard. The dull details of parish work were talked over in the usual dragging way for half an hour, when the minister became conscious of an intense coldness which seemed to benumb him in every limb; and he tried to walk to the fireplace. Suddenly all in the room became aware that he was very ill, and one called out, "He's got a stroke." Luckily the town doctor was also a deacon, and was therefore present; and he promptly said, "He's poisoned," and hot water from the teakettle, whites of eggs, mustard, and other domestic antidotes were administered with promptitude and effect. It is useless to detail the days of agony to the wretched girl, during which the sick man wavered between life and death, nor her