FAR AND NEAR 



trees, with a little patch of half-cultivated yams; 

 there are few cattle, more donkeys, and many black, 

 lean pigs ; colored people on the road everywhere, 

 men, women, and children, — mostly women and 

 children, — with small or large burdens upon their 

 heads, going to their work in the bush or going to 

 and returning from market. The smallest bundle 

 is here carried upon the head. 



I think it was this day that I first made the 

 jicquaintance of the sensitive plant, — " shame lady,'* 

 the natives call it. I saw a ball of delicate pink 

 bloom, the size of a boy's marble, amid a mass 

 of small, fine, pinnate leaves by the roadside. I 

 plucked the flower and a branch of the plant with it, 

 when lo ! as I turned my eyes from the flower to the 

 leaves, the latter were not the ones I thought I had 

 gathered. I plucked more, and then saw the sudden 

 change in the appearance of the leaves : the moment 

 they were touched they shut up hke a book, the 

 two halves hinging on the midrib. You stoop and 

 gather a spray of many-divided small leaves, — you 

 rise up with something in your hand that has an 

 entirely different aspect, the closed leaves present- 

 ing only sharp edges to you. Touch the plant with 

 your foot, or stick, ever so gently, and its aspect 

 changes in a twinkling. It is its way of hiding like 

 a sentient thing; the stems drop, the leaves close, 

 but the pretty flower is unchanged. Why so fear- 

 ful ? what is it hiding from ? of what advantage is 



234 



