Home-made biscuits waited at the
Court of these Powers, accompanied by a goodly fragment of plum-
cake, and various slender ladies' fingers, to be dipped into sweet
wine and kissed. Lowest of all, a compact leaden-vault enshrined
the sweet wine and a stock of cordials: whence issued whispers of
Seville Orange, Lemon, Almond, and Caraway-seed. There was a
crowning air upon this closet of closets, of having been for ages
hummed through by the Cathedral bell and organ, until those
venerable bees had made sublimated honey of everything in store;
and it was always observed that every dipper among the shelves
(deep, as has been noticed, and swallowing up head, shoulders, and
elbows) came forth again mellow-faced, and seeming to have
undergone a saccharine transfiguration.
The Reverend Septimus yielded himself up quite as willing a victim
to a nauseous medicinal herb-closet, also presided over by the
china shepherdess, as to this glorious cupboard. To what amazing
infusions of gentian, peppermint, gilliflower, sage, parsley,
thyme, rue, rosemary, and dandelion, did his courageous stomach
submit itself! In what wonderful wrappers, enclosing layers of
dried leaves, would he swathe his rosy and contented face, if his
mother suspected him of a toothache! What botanical blotches would
he cheerfully stick upon his cheek, or forehead, if the dear old
lady convicted him of an imperceptible pimple there! Into this
herbaceous penitentiary, situated on an upper staircase-landing: a
low and narrow whitewashed cell, where bunches of dried leaves hung
from rusty hooks in the ceiling, and were spread out upon shelves,
in company with portentous bottles: would the Reverend Septimus
submissively be led, like the highly popular lamb who has so long
and unresistingly been led to the slaughter, and there would he,
unlike that lamb, bore nobody but himself.
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