A JOURNEY TO NATURE 



&quot; Dilatation, delirium, incoherence, frenzy, 

 death. Throw it away.&quot; 



&quot; I ll drop it in the fire, see? Let s change the 

 subject. I never did care much for trumpet- 

 flowers.&quot; 



&quot; My dear fellow, your knowledge of flowers is 

 very limited. You obtained it in a hothouse. 

 You think they were created for buttonholes. 

 There are, however, some kinds that die there, 

 and then men throw them away.&quot; 



&quot; Oh, nonsense. Don t reduce me to the 

 traditional brute. There are flowers which, if 

 they once take root in a man s soul, embower and 

 sanctify his whole life, and then he sits, as the old 

 seer said, under his own vine and fig tree.&quot; 



At which the Doctor took his cigar out of his 

 mouth, emitted a long, low whistle, and then 

 throwing the stump into the fire, said : 



&quot; Suppose we go upstairs to bed.&quot; 



Then it was that Cuyp or some other Dutch 

 man should have seen us climbing up that old 

 ladder, the yellow dog barking after us with alarm, 

 as if he thought we were leaving the earth. 



And so, we rolled ourselves in husks, pulled 

 the dry stalks under our heads, and with a canopy 

 of smoke over us, fell asleep like two tired gyp 

 sies, the yellow dog keeping watch by the embers 

 below, and we never knowing until morning broke 

 that the field mice ran over us all night. 



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