APRIL DAYS 61 
better. The most remarkable instance of these 
natural affinities was in the case of Levi Thax- 
ter and his double anemones. Thaxter had 
always a gift for wild-flowers, and used often to 
bring to Cambridge the largest white anemones 
that were ever seen, from a certain special hill 
in Watertown ; they were not only magnificent 
in size and whiteness, but had that exquisite 
blue on the outside of the petals, as if the sky 
had bent down in ecstasy at last over its dar- 
lings, and left visible kisses there. But even 
this success was not enough, and one day he 
came with something yet choicer. It was a 
rue-leaved anemone (A. ¢halictrotdes) ; and each 
one of the three white flowers was double, not 
merely with that multiplicity of petals in the 
disk which is common with this species, but 
technically and horticulturally double, like the 
double-flowering almond or cherry, — with the 
most exquisitely delicate little petals, like fairy 
lace-work. He had three specimens, and gave 
one to Professor Asa Gray of Harvard, who 
said it was almost or quite unexampled, and 
another tome. As the man in the fable says 
of the chameleon, “I have it yet and can pro- 
duce it.” 
Now comes the marvel. The next winter 
Thaxter went to New York for a year, and 
wrote to me, as spring drew near, with solemn 
