His dominant idea, to which for the first hour he sacrificed without scruple every other, was flowers. I had a mischievous pleasure in professing a similar passion, on purpose to confound him with a description of a Weston flower-garden. If he talked of jessamine and Daphne odora, I talked of phlox and bachelor's-buttons. If he raved of azaleas and gladioluses, I told him of our China-asters, sunflowers, and hollyhocks. "Ah, now I see you are laughing at me!" said he, good-humoredly, after I had said, that, after all, I could not get up an admiration for day-lilies or tulips; "promise me that I may show you my tulips, and I will promise you that you shall like botany hereafter." We agreed at last to bury the hatchet at the foot of a rose-bush, which I said I would allow, excused the existence of other flowers. The bulbs he gave me on the top of the stage-coach that day made a revolution in the taste of Weston; and some climbing plants, from his house afterwards, took root in our rude homes, and have displaced the old glaring colors with soft beauty and grace. Before I left Weston, which happened in time, we had prairie-roses, honeysuckles, and woodbine clambering over half the houses in the place, and bouncing-Bets were extinguished forever. I forgot that we had never heard this man's name, though it did not matter at all. He was a cultivated gentleman, and we had no occasion for introduction. We met freely on that platform, and it was pleasant to us to talk on so many subjects outside of personal interest. He had travelled, and gave us results, in a sketchy, off-hand way, of much that he had observed that was extremely entertaining in foreign manners. Suddenly his loud, cheery voice rang out,-- "Halloo, old boy, get up here!" He did get up, a languid, pale man, with sharp features, and a frame so attenuated that I involuntarily placed a soft bag for him to lean against, and removed a cane and umbrella that seemed likely to hurt his bones. It was about half an hour before I saw that the new man was not at all an invalid, but of the natural gaunt frame and pallid complexion of my countrymen. My eyes had become so full of the fresh, rosy life of the Englishman's face, that the new man's face was bleached and unhealthy to me. I happened to glance back from him to the Dominie, and saw, that, allowing for green spectacles, they were both of a color. We were so arranged on the top of the coach, that with reasonable twisting of necks we were able to maintain an animated conversation, and soon found our account in the new element. "Well, Remington!" "Well, Lewis!" "Where from now?" "From Niagara, and home by the White Hills." "And what of the last, or of both?" "Miss Rugg has fallen into the one, and Miss Somebody has been to the top of the other. Had to be brought down, though. Women shouldn't climb mountains." "There has been some talk of a road, or practicable path at least, to the top of Mount Washington."