92 NORTH CAROLINA 



the next room she brought out a copy of the 

 manual, turned to the page, and showed me 

 the name. It was in the supplement, where 

 in my haste I had overlooked it. I won- 

 dered how often, in a New England country 

 village, a stranger could happen into a house, 

 painted or unpainted, and by any chance 

 find the mistress of it prepared to set him 

 right on a question of local botany. 



On a later occasion for thus encouraged 

 I called more than once afterward at the 

 same house the lady handed me an orchid. 

 I might be interested in it ; it was not very 

 common, she believed. I looked at it, think- 

 ing at first that I had never seen it before. 

 Then I seemed to remember something. 

 " Is it Pogonia verticillata? " I asked. She 

 smiled, and said it was ; and when I told her 

 that to the best of my recollection I had 

 never seen more than one specimen before, 

 and that upwards of twenty years ago (a 

 specimen from Blue Hill, Massachusetts), 

 she insisted upon believing that I must have 

 an extraordinary botanical memory, though 

 of course she did not put the compliment 

 thus baldly, but dressed it in some graceful, 

 unanswerable, feminine phrase which I, for 



