238 Idle^ Days in Patagonia. 



I will now restate it another way and more 

 fully. 



I am now holding an evening primrose in my 

 hand. As a fact at this moment I am holding 

 nothing but the pen with which I am writing this 

 chapter; but I am supposing myself t back in the 

 garden, and holding the flower that first suggested 

 this train of thought. I turn it about this way and 

 that, and although it pleases it does not delight, 

 does not move me : certainly I do not think very 

 highly of its beauty, although it is beautiful ; 

 placed beside the rose, the fuchsia, the azalea, or 

 the lily, it would not attract the eye. But it is a 

 link with the past, it summons vanished scenes to 

 my mind. I recognize that the plant I plucked it 

 from possesses a good deal of adaptiveness, a quality 

 one would scarcely suspect from seeing it only in 

 an English garden. Thus I remember that I first 

 knew it as a garden flower, that it grew large, on a 

 large plant, as here ; that on summer evenings I 

 was accustomed to watch its slim, pale, yellow buds 

 unfold, and called it, when speaking in Spanish, by 

 its quaint native name of James of the night, and, 

 in English, primrose simply. I recall with a smile 

 that it was a shock to my childish mind to learn 

 that our primrose was not the primrose. Then, I 

 remember, came the time when I could ride out 

 over the plain ; and it surprised me to discover that 

 this primrose, unlike the four-o'clock and morning- 

 glory, and other evening flowers in our garden, was 

 also a wild flower. I knew it by its unmistakable 



