This was better than I had dared to hope. When I saw him standing there so complacent and serene, I felt certain that a storm was brewing, or rather had brewed, and burst over my garden, and blighted its fair prospects. I was confident that he had gone and planted every square inch of the soil with some hideous absurdity which would spring up a hundred-fold in perpetual reminders of the one misfortune to which I have alluded. So his ready answer gave me relief, and yet I could not divest myself of a vague fear, a sense of coming thunder. In spite of my endeavors, that calm, clear face would lift itself to my view as a mere "weather-breeder"; but I ate my supper, unpacked my trunks, took out my papers of precious seeds, and sitting in the flooding sunlight under the little western porch, I poured them into my lap, and bade Halicarnassus come to me. He came, I am sorry to say, with a pipe in his mouth. "Do you wish to see my jewels?" I asked, looking as much like Cornelia as a little woman, somewhat inclined to dumpiness, can. Halicarnassus nodded assent. "There," said I, unrolling a paper, "that is _Lychnidea acuminala_. Sometimes it flowers in white masses, pure as a baby's soul. Sometimes it glows in purple, pink, and crimson, intense, but unconsuming, like Horeb's burning bush. The old Greeks knew it well, and they baptized its prismatic loveliness with their sunny symbolism, and called it the Flame-Flower. These very seeds may have sprung centuries ago from the hearts of heroes who sleep at Marathon; and when their tender petals quiver in the sunlight of my garden, I shall see the gleam of Attic armor and the flash of royal souls. Like heroes, too, it is both beautiful and bold. It does not demand careful cultivation,--no hot-house, tenderness"-- "I should rather think not," interrupted Halicarnassus. "Pat Curran has his front-yard full of it." I collapsed at once, and asked humbly,-- "Where did he get it?" "Got it anywhere. It grows wild almost. It's nothing but phlox. My opinion is, that the old Greeks knew no more about it than that brindled cow." Nothing further occurring to me to be said on the subject, I waived it and took up another parcel, on which I spelled out, with some difficulty, "_Delphinium exaltatum_. Its name indicates its nature." "It's an exalted dolphin, then, I suppose," said Halicarnassus. "Yes!" I said, dexterously catching up an _argumentum ad hominem_, "It _is_ an exalted dolphin,--an apotheosized dolphin,--a dolphin made glorious. For, as the dolphin catches the sunbeams and sends them back with a thousand added splendors, so this flower opens its quivering bosom and gathers from the vast laboratory of the sky the purple of a monarch's robe and the ocean's deep, calm blue. In its gracious cup you shall see"--