I like to think of his intimate friendship with the wholesome country children—­not the least of his blessings.  He was their chief visitor from the outside world.  He knew wonderful secrets about things one hadn’t noticed before, and he could make miracles with his quick strong fingers.  He’d sit down, his stick and knapsack beside him, his glamorous dog at his feet, and while you and your sisters and brothers and friends and neighbors hung about him like a cluster of tow-headed bees, he’d turn a few sticks and bits of cloth and twine and a tack or two, and an old roller-skate wheel he took out of his pocket, into an air-ship!  He could go down by your little creek and make you a water-wheel, or a windmill.  He could make you marvelous little men, funny little women, absurd animals, out of corks or peanuts.  He knew, too, just exactly the sort of knife your boy-heart ached for—­and at parting you found that very knife slipped into your enraptured palm.  You might save the pennies you earned by picking berries and gathering nuts, but you could never, never find at any store any candy that tasted like the sticks that came out of his pockets, and you needn’t hope to try.  He had the inviolable secret of that candy, and he imparted to it a divine flavor no other candy ever possessed.  If you were a little doll-less girl, he didn’t leave you with the provoking promise that Santa Claus would bring you one if you were good.  He was so sure you were good that he made you right then and there a wonderful doll out of corn-husks, with shredded hair, and a frock of his own handkerchief.  When he came again you got another doll—­a store doll; but I think your child-heart clung to the corn-baby with the handkerchief dress.  I have often wondered how many little cheeks snuggled against John Flint’s home-made dollies, how many innocent breasts cradled them; how many a little fellow carried his knife to bed with him, afraid to let it get out of reach of a hard little hand, because he might wake up in the morning and find he had only dreamed it!  No, I hardly think the country children were the least of John Flint’s blessings.  They would run to meet him, hold on to his hands, drag him here and there to show him what wonders their sharp eyes had discovered since his last visit; and give him, with shining eyes, such cocoons and caterpillars, and insects as they had found for him.  It was they who called him the Butterfly Man, a name which spread over the whole country-side.  If you had asked for John Flint, folks would have stared.  And if you described him—­a tall man in a Norfolk suit, with a red beard and a red dog, and an insect case: 

“Oh, you mean the Butterfly Man!  Sure.  You’ll find him about somewhere with the kids.”  If there was anything he couldn’t have, in that county, it was because folks hadn’t it to give if he should ask.

At home his passion for work at times terrified me.  When I protested: 

“I was twenty-five years old when I landed here,” he reminded me.  “So I’ve got twenty-five years’ back-work to catch up with.”