80 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
city, and two out of three even in the country, 
seriously suppose, for instance, that the buds 
upon trees are formed in the spring ; they have 
had them within sight all winter, and never 
seen them. So people think, in good faith, 
that a plant grows at the base of the stem, in- 
stead of at the top: that is, if they see a young 
sapling in which there is a crotch at five feet 
from the ground, they expect to see it ten feet 
from the ground by and by, — confounding the 
growth of a tree with that of a man or animal. 
But perhaps the best of us could hardly bear 
the system of tests unconsciously laid down by 
a small child of my acquaintance. The boy’s 
father, a college-bred man, had early chosen 
the better part, and employed his fine facul- 
ties in rearing laurels in his own beautiful nurs- 
ery gardens, instead of in the more arid soil 
of court-rooms or state-houses. Of course the 
young human scion knew the flowers by name 
before he knew his letters, and used their sym- 
bols more readily; and after he got the com- 
mand of both, he was one day asked by his 
younger brother what the word “idiot” meant, 
— for somebody in the parlor had been saying 
that somebody else was an idiot. “Don’t you 
know?” quoth Ben, in his sweet voice: “an 
idiot is a person who doesn’t know an arbor- 
vitze from a pine, — he does n’t know anything.” 
