But we were most interested to hear of the pennyroyal, it is soothing to be reminded that wild nature produces anything ready for the use of man.  Men know that something is good.  One says that it is yellow-dock, another that it is bitter-sweet, another that it is slippery-elm bark, burdock, catnip, calamint, elicampane, thoroughwort, or pennyroyal.  A man may esteem himself happy when that which is his food is also his medicine.  There is no kind of herb, but somebody or other says that it is good.  I am very glad to hear it.  It reminds me of the first chapter of Genesis.  But how should they know that it is good?  That is the mystery to me.  I am always agreeably disappointed; it is incredible that they should have found it out.  Since all things are good, men fail at last to distinguish which is the bane, and which the antidote.  There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite.  Stuff a cold and starve a cold are but two ways.  They are the two practices both always in full blast.  Yet you must take advice of the one school as if there was no other.  In respect to religion and the healing art, all nations are still in a state of barbarism.  In the most civilized countries the priest is still but a Powwow, and the physician a Great Medicine.  Consider the deference which is everywhere paid to a doctor’s opinion.  Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine.  Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful.  In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.  Priests and physicians should never look one another in the face.  They have no common ground, nor is there any to mediate between them.  When the one comes, the other goes.  They could not come together without laughter, or a significant silence, for the one’s profession is a satire on the other’s, and either’s success would be the other’s failure.  It is wonderful that the physician should ever die, and that the priest should ever live.  Why is it that the priest is never called to consult with the physician?  Is it because men believe practically that matter is independent of spirit.  But what is quackery?  It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by addressing his body alone.  There is need of a physician who shall minister to both soul and body at once, that is, to man.  Now he falls between two souls.

After passing through the locks, we had poled ourselves through the canal here, about half a mile in length, to the boatable part of the river.  Above Amoskeag the river spreads out into a lake reaching a mile or two without a bend.  There were many canal-boats here bound up to Hooksett, about eight miles, and as they were going up empty with a fair wind, one boatman offered to take us in tow if we would wait.  But when we came alongside, we found that they meant to take us on board, since otherwise we should clog their motions too much; but as our boat was too heavy