[Illustration:  THE BOTANIST.]

“Never mind the warming-pan,” said the traveler kindly, seeing that the professor was making himself cry, and unconsciously quoting Pickwick.

“I will not dilate on my title to trouble you for a few words more.  I perceive that I shall have a good deal to modify in my modest treatise.  I beg you to give us your views on some of the modifications now going on in the East, especially the Turkish question and the civilization of China.”

“My dear professor,” said the youthful Crichton sententiously, “do not disturb yourself with those problems, which are already disposed of.  In twenty years the sultan will become a monk, to get rid of the chief sultana, who has pestered his life out with her notions of woman’s rights, and who wore the Bloomer costume before the Crimean war.  As for the question about China, it is better to let sleeping dogs lie:  it has been a great mistake to arouse China, for it is a dog that drags after it three hundred millions of pups.  Only see the effect already in Lima and San Francisco!  Before a century has elapsed all Asia, with Alaska and the Pacific part of America, to say nothing of that petty extremity you persist in calling Europe, will be in the power of China.  Your little girls, professor, will be more liable to lose their feet than their arms, for it is a hundred chances to one but your great-grand-nieces grow up Chinawomen.”

“Astonishing!” murmured the professor of geography.

“Admirable!” cried the doctor.

I had hitherto said nothing, though I was capitally entertained.  At length I ventured to take up my own parable, and, addressing the pretended disciple of the Brahmans, I asked, “Can you enlighten us, sir, on the true reason of the revolt of the slave States in America?”

The cosmopolitan, by this time standing, turned to me with a courteous motion of acquiescence; and, after having given me to understand by an agreeable smile that he did not confound me with his pair of victims, he said pompously, “The true cause was that each Northern freeholder demanded the use of two planters, now mostly octoroons, for body-servants.”

“You don’t say so?” said the school-teacher, profoundly impressed.

The Scotchman looked like him who digesteth a pill.  I decided quickly on my own role, and briskly joined the conversation.  Fishing up my botany-box and extracting the little flower, “Nothing is more likely when you know the country,” I observed.  “I have lived in Florida, gentlemen, where I undertook, as Comparative Geographer and as amateur botanist” (I looked searchingly at the professor, who had called me an herb-doctor), “to fix the location of Ponce de Leon’s fountain and observe the medicinal plants to which it owes its virtue.  America, I must explain to you, is a country where proportions are greatly changed.  The pineapple tree there grows so very tall that it is impossible from the ground to reach the fruit.  This little