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 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 
