xvi A NATURALIST'S BOYHOOD 
when I was ill helped me. I think I studied flowers 
then, so that their forms and colors were indelibly im- 
pressed on my mind. When I was older I made a 
small bunch of flowers in wax. Not a detail escaped 
me. I made moulds of all kinds of leaves. Once I put 
together a rose, some sprigs of mignonette and helio- 
trope in wax, and gave them to my dear old friend, 
Henry Ward Beecher. He was delighted with my flow- 
ers, and put them on his study table. Presently Mrs. 
Beecher came in. She ran to the flowers and broke the 
rose all to pieces." 
" How could she have done that?" I asked. 
" It must have been with her nose. She wanted to 
smell the rose." 
Then Mr. Hamilton Gibson showed me some monster 
drawings of flowers Brobdingnagian ones. The flow- 
ers opened and closed when you pulled a string, show- 
ing their interior structure. Here were bees or other 
insects, and they flew into the flowers, collected the 
honey, and, above all, the pollen, and buzzed out again. 
He explained to me how plant life would perish if it 
were not for certain insects, which bring a new exist- 
ence to flowers ; for without these winged helpers there 
would be no longer any varieties of flowers or seeds. 
You will see, then, that in tracing the beginning of 
Mr. Hamilton Gibson's career what I mean by harking 
backward. 
I am certain, too, that in every boy and girl there is 
something good and excellent. Like the flower visited 
by the bee, all it wants is impulse. Then, as Mr. Ham- 
ilton Gibson explained it to me, will come the blossom- 
ing, and lastly perfect fruitage. 
BARNET PHILLIPS. 
