506 JOHN' DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



friends, writing of the misunderstandings to which John was 

 subjected, says : " Most of us knew only the weaver. We 

 did not know the botanist and the student, because we did 

 not know and love the flowers. Nor can we be blamed. 

 Flowers in school would have seemed sadly out of place. 

 We therefore grew up ignorant of their secrets. The un- 

 initiated cannot be expected to read Flora's richly illumi- 

 nated book. Hence the charm Duncan felt in conning it 

 over, line by line, was wholly unfelt by us." 



There lies the chief source of our blindness " Flowers 

 in school would have seemed sadly out of place ! " Surely 

 it is now time that this past reproach should be removed. 

 Surely we have crossed the threshold of a better day, when 

 flowers will not only daily adorn the teacher's desk and 

 smile in every window, but, along with other natural things, 

 be taught and understood in every school in the land ; till 

 they are loved and sought for in after life, and till they 

 become a means of deeper joy and higher education that 

 will lead our people more and more out to "the breezy 

 common " of nature and natural studies. 



Such are some of the elements of the rare happiness, 

 self-helpfulness, and peace achieved by this lowly scientific 

 weaver, with a keen temperament, amidst extraordinary 

 disabilities, and under the most unlikely conditions ; and 

 his story will not have been written in vain, if it should 

 help any of us to become what Crashaw celebrates, what 

 every one sighs and seeks to be, however erroneously and 

 blindly, and what John Duncan greatly was 



" A man all his own wealth, 

 His own music, his own health ; 

 A happy soul, that all the way 

 To heaven hath a summer's day." 



