His dominant idea, to which for the first hour he sacrificed without
scruple every other, was flowers. I had a mischievous pleasure in
professing a similar passion, on purpose to confound him with a
description of a Weston flower-garden. If he talked of jessamine and
Daphne odora, I talked of phlox and bachelor's-buttons. If he raved of
azaleas and gladioluses, I told him of our China-asters, sunflowers,
and hollyhocks.
"Ah, now I see you are laughing at me!" said he, good-humoredly, after I
had said, that, after all, I could not get up an admiration for
day-lilies or tulips; "promise me that I may show you my tulips, and I
will promise you that you shall like botany hereafter."
We agreed at last to bury the hatchet at the foot of a rose-bush, which
I said I would allow, excused the existence of other flowers. The bulbs
he gave me on the top of the stage-coach that day made a revolution in
the taste of Weston; and some climbing plants, from his house
afterwards, took root in our rude homes, and have displaced the old
glaring colors with soft beauty and grace.
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