nd 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."

He had taken over a correspondence that had since become voluminous,
and which included more and more names that stood for very much.
Sometimes when I read aloud a passage from a letter that praised him,
he turned red, and writhed like a little boy whose ears are being
relentlessly washed by his elders.

By this time he had learned to really classify; heavens, how
unerringly he could place an insect in its proper niche! I