When I last lounged on the old settle and counted the several kinds of herbs hanging overhead, an aged negress assured me that every “yarb” kept some disease at bay, and predicted disaster as the new kitchens with their plastered ceilings and modern stoves gave way to more primitive architecture and methods. And I am half inclined to believe that she was right. The old folks had their aches and pains, but not so much of that depressing languor that we call _malaria_. Might not the ever-present odors of sweet-smelling herbs have kept this at bay? I fancied I felt the better for the whiff of pennyroyal, and, gathering a handful of its leaves, breathed the spiciness until my lungs were filled. It is something to have an herb at hand that revives the past, and more perhaps to have many that add a charm to the present, for the pastures in August would be somewhat dreary, I think, were there not in almost every passing breeze the odor of sweet-smelling herbs. But if pennyroyal, sweet cicely, and the spicy “mocker”-nut carry me back some twoscore years, what shall be said of a faint odor that can yet be distilled from plants that flourished in the same pastures or where these pastures now are, perhaps a million years ago? One is not given to thinking of anthracite as at one time wood, but it is different in this instance, for the blackened, fern-like plants in the underlying clays are still wood and not petrified; so that they burn with a feeble flame when dry, and burning throw off a rich fragrance akin to frankincense. I have often placed a splinter of these ancient trees in the flame of a candle, and, sniffing the odor that arises, travel in fancy to New Jersey’s upland and meadows before they were trodden by palæolithic man; before even the mastodon and gigantic beaver had appeared; when enormous lizards and a few strange birds ruled the wide wastes. But the world here was not wholly strange, even then, for many a familiar tree was growing in this old river valley, as the delicate impressions of their leaves in the clay so clearly demonstrate. If, then, one would indulge in retrospection—and therein lies one of life’s most solid comforts—it will be found that suggestive objects are ever about us, and the herbs of the field, in August, would scarcely be missed, if unhappily they ceased to grow. But why, it may be asked, are these same herbs so suggestive of the past, so certain to give rise to retrospective thought? It is not a personal matter, for I have questioned many people, and in this they all agree. One reply is a fair representative of all. Offering a little bunch of garden herbs to an old man no longer able to wander out of doors, he immediately buried his nose in it, drew a long breath, and remarked, “How that carries me back to the old homestead!”