"I triturated, I infused, I distilled it myself in these very rooms, and
know it--know it all--all the ingredients, save one. They are common
things enough--comfortable things--some of them a little queer--one or two
that folks have a prejudice against--and then there is that one thing
that I don't know. It is foolish in me to be dallying with such a mess,
which I thought was a piece of quackery, while that strange visitor bade
me do it,--and yet, what a strength has come from it! He said it was a
rare cordial, and, methinks, it has brightened up my weary life all day,
so that Pansie has found me the fitter playmate. And then the dose--it is
so absurdly small! I will try it again."

He took the silver stopple from the bottle, and with a practised hand,
tremulous as it was with age, so that one would have thought it must have
shaken the liquor into a perfect shower of misapplied drops, he dropped--I
have heard it said--only one single drop into the goblet of water. It fell
into it with a dazzling brightness, like a spark of ruby flame, and subtly
diffusing itself through the whole body of water, turned it to a rosy hue
of great brilliancy. He held it up between his eyes and the light, and
seemed to admire and wonder at it.

"It is very odd," said he, "that such a pure, bright liquor should have
come out of a parcel of weeds that mingled their juices here. The thing is
a folly,--it is one of those compositions in which the chemists--the
cabalists, perhaps--used to combine what they thought the virtues of many
plants, thinking that something would result in the whole, which was not
in either of them, and a new efficacy be created. Whereas, it has been the
teaching of my experience that one virtue counteracts another, and is the
enemy of it. I never believed the former theory, even when that strange
madman bade me do it. And what a thick, turbid matter it was, until that