We found masses of goldenrod, all dry and scattering, principally along the railway embankment, which we took for a good omen that it would be a travelling flower; and in the fulness of time it was given to Atma with instructions. His excitement was even greater than mine, he nursed it tenderly, but it needed no nursing. It came up in thousands delighted with itself and the new climate, overrunning its boxes so that Atma pointed to it like a proud father. Then we planted it out along the paling behind the coreopsis, and it immediately--that is to say in three months’ time--grew to be five feet high, with the most thick and lovely yellow sprays, which have been waving there against the fir-trees, as I said before, for the last fortnight. It has quite lost the way to its proper season; at home it blossoms in September and this is only June,--but it appears to be rather the better than the worse for that, though it does seem to look about, as the Princess said when I sent her some, for the red sumach which is its friend and companion at home. It is itself like a little fir-tree with flat spreading branches of blossom, especially when it stands in groups as they do, and the sun slants upon it giving the sprays an edge of brighter gold so that it is the most luminous thing in the garden. And the warm scent of it, holding something so far beyond itself and India, something essential, impregnated with the solace that one’s youth and its affections are not lost, but only on the other side of the world! Another delightful thing about the goldenrod is the way the bees and butterflies instantly found it out. The sprays are dotted with them all day long, swaying and dipping with the weight of the little greedy bodies; their hum of content stands in the air with the warm and comfortable scent. “This is good fare” they seem to say. “There are some things they make better in America.” I had never before done anything for a bee or a butterfly, it is not really so easy, and I would not have believed there was such pleasure in it. “_Le fleur qui vole_”--is not that charming of M. Bourget?