OLD IDEAS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17177, 22 October 1923, Page 8

OLD IDEAS.

BY WALT MASON. Your grandma knew the vin.c of barks and roots and buds; if any ailment hurt you, she gave you boneset when grandpa's corns were sorest. or when he had the gout, she roamed the fields and forest for yarbs to knock them out. And in the gioomy attic dried weeds in hunches hung, to stifle pains rheumatic, or heal the rusty lung. And now we smile at granny, and josh her ancient ways: the cures were most uncanny thev used in olden days. Strange talk of microbes vicious. strange bunk concerning germs, the learned physicians dish us. in phosphorescent terms. All vain are mullein bitters, and useless tansy tea : we have to kill the critters that are too small to see. Of course, old dames were silly to brew things in a crock, and climb the pastures hilly in search of yellow dock -in vain was their endeavour, in vain the cures they sprung; yet people lived forever when you and I were young. Filled up with \arbs and pine tea. the greybeards went their way. and when their years were ninety, they still were pitching hay. 'Hie old receipts we’re burning, we know old ways were wrong, and yet, with all our learnings, we do not live so long.