"Where did he get it?"
"Got it anywhere. It grows wild almost. It's nothing but phlox. My
opinion is, that the old Greeks knew no more about it than that brindled
cow."
Nothing further occurring to me to be said on the subject, I waived
it and took up another parcel, on which I spelled out, with some
difficulty, "_Delphinium exaltatum_. Its name indicates its nature."
"It's an exalted dolphin, then, I suppose," said Halicarnassus.
"Yes!" I said, dexterously catching up an _argumentum ad hominem_, "It
_is_ an exalted dolphin,--an apotheosized dolphin,--a dolphin made
glorious. For, as the dolphin catches the sunbeams and sends them back
with a thousand added splendors, so this flower opens its quivering
bosom and gathers from the vast laboratory of the sky the purple of a
monarch's robe and the ocean's deep, calm blue. In its gracious cup you
shall see"--
"A fiddlestick!" jerked out Halicarnassus, profanely. "What are you
raving about such a precious bundle of weeds for? There isn't a
shoemaker's apprentice in the village that hasn't his seven-by-nine
garden overrun with them. You might have done better than bring
cartloads of phlox and larkspur a thousand miles. Why didn't you import
a few hollyhocks, or a sunflower or two, and perhaps a dainty slip
of cabbage? A pumpkin-vine, now, would climb over the front-door
deliciously, and a row of burdocks would make a highly entertaining
border."
The reader will bear me witness that I had met my first rebuff with
humility. It was probably this very humility that emboldened him to a
second attack. I determined to change my tactics and give battle.
"Halicarnassus," said I, severely, "you are a hypocrite. You set up for
a Democrat"--
"Not I," interrupted he; "I voted for Harrison in '40, and for Fremont
in '56, and"--
"Nonsense!" interrupted I, in turn; "I mean a Democrat etymological, not
a Democrat political. You stand by the Declaration of Independence, and
believe in liberty, equality, and fraternity, and that all men are of
one blood; and here you are, ridiculing these innocent flowers, because
their brilliant beauty is not shut up in a conservatory to exhale its
fragrance on a fastidious few, but blooms on all alike, gladdening the
home of exile and lightening the burden of labor."
Halicarnassus saw that I had made a point against him, and preserved a
discreet silence.
"But you are wrong," I went on, "even if you are right. You may laugh to
scorn my floral treasures, because they seem to you common and unclean,
but your laughter is premature. It is no ordinary seed that you see
before you. It sprang from no profane soil. It came from the--the--some
kind of an office at WASHINGTON, Sir! It was given me by one whose name
stands high on the scroll of fame,--a statesman whose views are as
broad as his judgment is sound,--an orator who holds all hearts in his
hand,--a man who is always found on the side of the feeble truth against
the strong falsehood,--whose sympathy for all that is good, whose
hostility to all that is bad, and whose boldness in every righteous
cause make him alike the terror and abhorrence of the oppressor, and the
hope and joy and staff of the oppressed."
"What is his name?" said Halicarnassus, phlegmatically.
"And for your miserable pumpkin-vine," I went on, "behold this
morning-glory, that shall open its barbaric splendor to the sun and
mount heavenward on the sparkling chariots of the dew. I took this from
the white hand of a young girl in whose heart poetry and purity have
met, grace and virtue have kissed each other,--whose feet have danced
over lilies and roses, who has known no sterner duty than to give
caresses, and whose gentle, spontaneous, and ever active loveliness
continually remind me that of such is the kingdom of heaven."
"Courted yet?" asked Halicarnassus, with a show of interest.