One day he noticed my gold box as I was putting it in my bosom, and he
immediately begged me to let him have it, to keep a few flies' legs and
grasshoppers' wings which he would have defended with the last drop of
his blood. It needed all the reverence I had for the relics of my love
to resist the demands of friendship. All he could obtain from me was
permission to hide away a very pretty little plant in my precious box.
This plant, which he declared he was the first to discover, was allowed
a home by the side of my _fiancee's_ ring and note only on condition
that it should be called Edmunda sylvestris; to this he consented. He
had given the name of Samuel Adams to a beautiful wild apple-tree;
he had christened some industrious bee or other Franklin; and nothing
pleased him more than to associate some honoured name with his ingenious
observations.
The attachment I felt for him was all the more genuine from its being my
first friendship with a man of my own age. The pleasure which I derived
from this intimacy gave me a new insight into life, and revealed
capacities and needs of the soul of which I had hitherto been ignorant.
As I could never wholly break away from that love of chivalry which had
been implanted in me in early childhood, it pleased me to look upon him
as my "brother in arms," and I expressed a wish that he would give me
this special title too, to the exclusion of every other intimate friend.
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