“Here is a peculiarly large specimen of the rudbeckia.  Observe the deep purple of the cone, and the bright yellow of the petals.  Here is another that grew hardly two feet away, in the grass near the fence where the rails and the blackberry bushes have shaded it.  How small and undeveloped it is.”

“They crowd up to the plowed land,” I observed.

“Yes, they reach out for a better chance in life—­like men.  With more room, better food, freer air, you see how much finer they grow.”

It was curious to me, having hitherto barely observed the cone-flowers along my fences, save as a colour of beauty, how simply we fell to talking of them as though in truth they were people like ourselves, having our desires and possessed of our capabilities.  It gave me then, for the first time, the feeling which has since meant such varied enjoyment, of the peopling of the woods.

“See here,” he said, “how different the character of these individuals.  They are all of the same species.  They all grow along this fence within two or three rods; but observe the difference not only in size but in colouring, in the shape of the petals, in the proportions of the cone.  What does it all mean?  Why, nature trying one of her endless experiments.  She sows here broadly, trying to produce better cone-flowers.  A few she plants on the edge of the field in the hope that they may escape the plow.  If they grow, better food and more sunshine produce more and larger flowers.”

So we talked, or rather he talked, finding in me an eager listener.  And what he called botany seemed to me to be life.  Of birth, of growth, of reproduction, of death, he spoke, and his flowers became sentient creatures under my eyes.

And thus the sun went down and the purple mists crept silently along the distant low spots, and all the great, great mysteries came and stood before me beckoning and questioning.  They came and they stood, and out of the cone-flower, as the old professor spoke, I seemed to catch a glimmer of the true light.  I reflected how truly everything is in anything.  If one could really understand a cone-flower he could understand this Earth.  Botany was only one road toward the Explanation.

Always I hope that some traveller may have more news of the way than I, and sooner or later, I find I must make inquiry of the direction of every thoughtful man I meet.  And I have always had especial hope of those who study the sciences:  they ask such intimate questions of nature.  Theology possesses a vain-gloriousness which places its faith in human theories; but science, at its best, is humble before nature herself.  It has no thesis to defend:  it is content to kneel upon the earth, in the way of my friend, the old professor, and ask the simplest questions, hoping for some true reply.

I wondered, then, what the professor thought, after his years of work, of the Mystery; and finally, not without confusion, I asked him.  He listened, for the first time ceasing to dig, shake out and arrange his specimens.  When I had stopped speaking he remained for a moment silent, then he looked at me with a new regard.  Finally he quoted quietly, but with a deep note in his voice: