"

When at times the secretary brought his guests to see what he
pleasingly enough termed Appleboro's one claim to distinction, the
Butterfly Man did the honors to the manner born. Drawer after drawer
and box after box would he open, patiently answering and explaining.
And indeed, I think the contents were worth coming far to see. Some of
them had come to us from the ends of the earth; from China and Japan
and India and Africa and Australia, from the Antilles and Mexico and
South America and the isles of the Pacific; from many and many a
lonely missionary station had they been sent us. Even as our
collection grew, the library covering it grew with it. But this was
merely the most showy and pleasing part of the work. That which had
the greatest scientific worth and interest, that upon which John
Flint's value and reputation were steadily mounting, was in less
lovely and more destructive forms of insect life. Beside this last, a
labor calling for the most unremitting, painstaking, persevering
research, observation, and intelligence, the painted beauties of his
butterflies were but as precious play. For in this last he was
wringing from Nature's reluctant fingers some of her dearest and most
deeply hidden secrets. He was like Jacob, wrestling all night long
with an unknown angel, saying sturdily:

"I will not let thee go except thou tell me thy name!" Like Jacob, he
paid the price of going halt for his knowledge.

I like to think that Hunter understood the enormous value of the
naturalist's work. But I fancy the silent and absorbed student himself
was to his mind the most interesting specimen, the most valuable
study. It amused him to try to draw his reticent host into familiar
and intimate conversation. Flint was even as his name.

Oddly enough, Hunter shared the Butterfly Man's liking for that
unspeakable Book of Obituaries, and I have seen him take a batch of
them from his pocket as a free-will offering. I have seen him, who had
all French, Russian and English literature at his fingers' ends, sit
chuckling and absorbed for an hour over that fearful collection of
lugubrious verse and worse grammar; pausing every now and then to cast
a speculative and curious glance at his impassive host, who, paying
absolutely no attention to him, bent his whole mind, instead, upon
some tiny form in a balsam slide mount under his microscope.

"Why don't you admire Mr. Hunter?" I was curious to know.

"But I do admire him." Flint w