222 GABDENING FOR PLEASURE. 



wafted over the Brazos for leagues ; in short, never before 

 had eye of mortal rested on such a flower. The man of 

 war was subdued. He betook himself to the peaceful 

 task of gathering seed, and turned his steps to the haunts 

 of civilized man to distribute it. We first heard of him 

 in Washington, where he wished to place it in the hands 

 of the government, and accordingly offered it to Mr. 

 William Smith, Superintendent of the Botanic Gardens 

 there ; but the government, being short of funds, so Smith 

 said, was not just then in a position to buy, and with 

 his advice George trimmed his "sales "for New York 

 and a market. His success in Baltimore and Philadelphia 

 was so great (where he started the sale of the seeds at two 

 cents apiece) that it induced him, when he struck New 

 York, to advance the price to five cents a seed. He put 

 up at one of the best hotels, and claimed that for a month 

 his sales of the seed of the Cockatelle the beautiful 

 Texas flower reached fifty dollars a day. But his success 

 threw him off his balance. He took to fire water, and in 

 an unguarded moment fell into the hands of a newspaper 

 man, who extracted from him all the facts connected 

 with the enterprise. George never was a scout, had 

 never been in Texas, but he had been a good customer to 

 the various seedsmen of the different cities, where his 

 purchases of Okra or Gumbo seed, at about fifty cents a 

 pound, had made nearly a dearth of the article. His 

 victims (whose names he gave by the score, and which 

 were duly chronicled in the newspaper article referred 

 to) were from all classes : the enterprising florist, who 

 secretly went into it in a wholesale way, with a view to 

 outwit his less fortunate fellows ; the grandee of Fifth 

 Avenue, who anticipated a blaze of beauty on his lawn ; 

 the hotel man, whose window boxes were to perfume the 

 air ; all had fallen easy victims to the wiles of Comanche 

 George. George disappeared from New York, though 

 there is but little doubt that his business had been too 



