of the stuff, till the farmers cursed him for introducing the
American Saugh."

"The American what?" demanded Wilkinson.

"Saugh; it's an old Scotch word for willow, and comes from the French
_saule_, I suppose."

"I am not sorry for them," said Wilkinson; "they say that pest, the
Canada thistle, came from the Old Country."

"Yes, that's true; and so did Pusley, which Warner compares with
original sin; and a host of other plants. Why, on part of the Hamilton
mountain you won't find a single native plant. It is perfectly covered,
from top to bottom, with dusty, unwholesome-looking weeds from Europe
and the Southern States. But we paid them back."

"How was that?"

"You know, a good many years ago, sailing vessels began to go from the
Toronto harbour across the Atlantic to British ports. There's a little
water-plant that grows in Ashbridge's Bay, called the Anacharis, and
this little weed got on to the bottom of the ocean vessels. Salt water
didn't kill it, but it lived till the ships got to the Severn, and there
it fell off and took root, and blocked up the canals with a solid mass
of subaqueous vegetation that made the English canal men dredge night
and day to get rid of it. I tell you we've got some pretty hardy things
out here in Canada."

"Do you not think," asked Wilkinson, "that our talk is getting too like
that of Charles and his learned father in Gosse's 'Canadian
Naturalist'?"

"All right, my boy, I'll oppress you no longer with a tender father's
scientific lore, but, with your favourite poet, say:--

"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

"That is because of their associations, a merely relative reason," said
the dominie.

"It isn't though, at least not altogether. Listen, now, to what Tennyson
says, or to something like what he says:--

Little flower in the crannied wall,
Peeping out of the crannies,
I hold you, root and all, in my hand;
Little flower, if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

There's no association nor relation in that; the flower brings you at
once face to face with infinite life. Do you know what these
strawberries brought to me?"

"A pleasant feast I should say."

"No, they made me think how much better it would have been if I had had
somebody to gather them for; I don't say a woman, because that's tabooed
between