theatres?"

"Why, I've never been to one," Sylvia confessed.

"You're just as well off. Actors ain't what they used to be. When you
saw Edwin Booth in 'Hamlet' or Jefferson in 'Rip,' you saw acting. I
haven't been in any theatre since I saw Jefferson in the 'Rivals' the
last time he came round. There used to be a stock company at the
Metropolitan about war-time that beat any of these new actor folks. I'd
rather see a good circus any time than one of these singing pieces.
Sassafras tea and a circus every spring; I always take both."

Sylvia found these views on the drama wholly edifying. Circuses and
sassafras tea were within the range of her experience, and finding that
she had struck a point of contact, Mrs. Owen expressed her pity for any
child that did not enjoy a round of sassafras tea every spring.
Sassafras in the spring, and a few doses of quinine in the fall, to
eliminate the summer's possible accumulation of malaria, were all the
medicine that any good Hoosier needed, Mrs. Owen averred.

"I'm for all this new science, you understand that," Mrs. Owen
continued. "A good deal of it does seem to me mighty funny, but when
they tell me to boil drinking-water to kill the bugs in it, and show me
pictures of the bugs they take with the microscope, I don't snort just
because my grandfather didn't know about those things and lived to be
eighty-two and then died from being kicked by a colt. I go into the
kitchen and I say to Eliza, 'Bile the water, Liza; bile it twice.'
That's the kind of a new woman I am. But let's see; we were speaking of
Marian."