What first attracted me to the plant was the fact that it was never twice the same. There was a family likeness--about as much as there is between me and my brother Charles--but that was as far as it went. No self-respecting plant behaves like that. The first that I saw was in a young lady's hair, and I only noticed in passing that it was very much like a full-blown rose, with crimson, satiny petals. The following morning, on my way back to the hotel, I saw the same rather spectacular blossom in a private garden and was somewhat puzzled by the fact that it was growing on a stalk very much like an Easter lily, with long, swordlike leaves in a whorl about its base. There were several colors on the same bed--reds and creamy whites and one lot of a striking orange color. Then, in the forest, I found the things growing in an entirely different manner. At least, the crotchety old duffer who was guiding me swore that they were the same plant, although these were growing like parasitic orchids on huge mats of threadlike roots. The petals were more orchid-like, too, and less flamboyantly colored, and I assumed that this might be an ancestral form from which the cultivated varieties had been developed. All in all, I think I saw some twenty different varieties of Zulu rose and no two of them were alike. That I did not see the one thing that was of importance, or even hear of it, can be ascribed only to the notoriously bad luck of the Abercrombies. I saw Zulu roses that were like thistles, and others that were like sunflowers. I saw them growing like water-lilies, like cactus, and like edelweiss. They weren't common, but wherever they were they seemed to be perfectly adapted to the environment they were in. Their perfume was really overpowering and not entirely pleasant, and I noted in passing that there were never any bees or other insects near them. Unfortunately, while I mentioned the fact to my old teacher in the letter I sent with cuttings of three or four of the plant's many varieties, I let it go at that. Nearly a year passed before I saw Miss Liberty's torch raised over New York harbor and watched the friendly hills of the Mohawk Valley closing in on either side of the train. Springville was just what it had been fifteen years before--the same rutted streets, the same fly-specked store windows, the same sleepy horses in front of the Oriskany House--even the same sparrows quarreling under the eaves of the Methodist Church. Jim Selford hacked me up from the station--he's Mayor of Springville now, and proprietor of the garage which he opened with much misgiving when he was sure that the horse had gone to stay. In the course of our parade up Main Street he gave me thumbnail sketches of practically everyone of importance who had been born, died, or come to fame since I left town.