XVI A naturalist's boyhood 



when I was ill helped me. I think I studied flowers 

 then, so that their forms and colors were indelibly im- 

 pressed on my mind. When I was older I made a 

 small bunch of flowers in wax. Not a detail escaped 

 me. I made moulds of all kinds of leaves. Once I put 

 together a rose, some sprigs of mignonette and helio- 

 trope in wax, and gave them to my dear old friend, 

 Henry Ward Beecher. He was delighted with my flow- 

 ers, and put them on his study table. Presently Mrs. 

 Beecher came in. She ran to the flowers and broke the 

 rose all to pieces." 



" How could she have done that?" I asked. 



" It must have been with her nose. She wanted to 

 smell the rose." 



Then Mr. Hamilton Gibson showed me some monster 

 drawings of flowers — Brobdingnagian ones. The flow- 

 ers opened and closed when you pulled a string, show- 

 ing their interior structure. Here were bees or other 

 insects, and they flew into the flowers, collected the 

 honey, and, above all, the pollen, and buzzed out again. 

 He explained to me how plant life would perish if it 

 were not for certain insects, which bring a new exist- 

 ence to flowers; for without these winged helpers there 

 would be no longer any varieties of flowers or seeds. 



You will see, then, that in tracing the beginning of 

 Mr. Hamilton Gibson's career what I mean by harking 

 backward. 



I am certain, too, that in every boy and girl there is 

 something good and excellent. Like the flower visited 

 by the bee, all it wants is impulse. Then, as Mr. Ham- 

 ilton Gibson explained it to me, will come the blossom- 

 ing, and lastly perfect fruitage. 



Barnet Phillips. 



