Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1890 — CHARMING AWAY WARTS. [ARTICLE]

CHARMING AWAY WARTS.

Several Easy Cures for the Annoying; Excrescenses. “If a man will write down the number of warts that he has on his bands on the hat band of a tramp without the tramp knowing it the latter will carry the warts away with him,” suggested George William, the elderly oracle on warts after a long silence. “Warts used to give in,” he continued “when you cut one notch in a green elder stick for every wart you had-and then rubbed the stick on each wart and then buried it in the barn yard until it rots. That fixes ’em. Take a black snail, rub him on the warts and then stick him on a thorn bush. Do this nine successive nights and the snails and the warts will be dead together.” Chalk marks on tho stove funnel used to fix my warts,” said the chairman of the meeting. “Get ’em on when nobody could see you and when they disappeared warts went, too. This used to get sort of mixed when my mother saw the chalk marks and wiped ’em off. When I used to see a funeral go by unexpectedly I used to rub the warts up and down and say, ‘Warts and corpses pass away and never more return.’ That was intended to fix ’em.” “Charming warts was the popular way in my day,” said the minister. “A man of elderly mein and sad features was the king of the charmers. I went to him surreptitiously one day and he looked me in the eyes and said something that sounded like ‘Wobbly, gobbly. gum,’ and a lot more of the same interesting description. I’ve forgotten whether the warts went or not We used to think that to take as many pebbles as we had warts, touch them to the excrescences, sew them in a bag and take them to the four corners of the cross roads and throw the bag over the left shoulder, would do the business. The only bad feature of this was that if any person should find the bag and open it he would reap the warty treasure of the bag.”—Lewiston Journal.