60 AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND 



who had bought the calf, and he sold it again to the 

 same lady, Mrs. Morgan, for $300. In less than one 

 year, or two, I don't know exactly, I sold the two calves 



first weaned, to a Drover of Orchids in Troy, for 



$225, and at that price because he was my friend, and 

 he is so yet, in 1892 .... I have an idea that some will 

 whisper in each other's ear ; that " Albany Dutchman 

 must be an awful boaster with his rigmaroles ! I accept 

 the expressions, Albany Dutchman and rigmaroles, but 

 not boaster. I am not a boaster, unless you understand 

 by boaster, a man who tells the truth without meta- 

 phor circumlocution, then I am a boaster, and proud 

 of it 



" Now yon may possibly ask yourself if that over- 

 stretched history of a plant will close the dams of my 

 overflowing vein ? I would do it at once if I thought 

 you were tired of trampling in thickset of obscure, and 

 often unmeaning digression s. ... but my vanity 

 prompts me to go on, for I have not yet exhausted my 

 stock. After this, another. 



Don't you say in English, " the more the merrier ? " 

 Well then, you can not complain if I understand a lit- 

 tle of the genius of your mother tongue, and try to 

 apply it, that is my way of learning abstruse philoso- 

 phy, and the English into the bargain. Some day 

 when I have leisure, and if I do not slip off from that 





