he daughter of the Jonsboda farmer
married; and her son played in the shadow of the old tree, and grew
so fond of it that when he went out to preach he also called himself
after it. Nils Ingemarsson was the name he received in baptism, and
to that he added Linnaeus, never dreaming that in doing it he handed
down the name and the fame of the friend of his play hours to all
coming days. But it was so; for Parson Nils' eldest son, Carl Linne,
or Linnaeus, became a great man who brought renown to his country and
his people by telling them and all the world more than any one had
ever known before about the trees and the flowers. The King knighted
him for his services to science, and the people of every land united
in acclaiming him the father of botany and the king of the flowers.

They were the first things he learned to love in his baby world. If
he was cross, they had but to lay him on the grass in the garden and
put a daisy in his hand, and he would croon happily over it for
hours. He was four years old when his father took him to a wedding
in the neighborhood. The men guests took a tramp over the farm, and
in the twilight they sat and rested in the meadow, where the spring
flowers grew. The minister began telling them stories about them;
how they all had their own names and what powers for good or ill
the apothecary found in the leaves and root of some of them. Carl's
father, though barely out of college, was a bright and gifted man.
One of his parishioners said once that they couldn't afford a whole
parson, and so they took a young one; but if that was the way of it,
the men of Stenbrohult made a better bargain than they knew. They
sat about listening to his talk, but no one listened more closely
than little Carl. After that he had thought for nothing else. In the
corner of the garden he had a small plot of his own, and into it he
planted all the wild flowers from the fields, and he asked many more
questions about them than his father could answer. One day he came
back with one whose name he had forgotten. The minister was busy
with his sermon.

"If you don't remember," he said impatiently, "I will never tell you
the name of another flower." The boy went away, his eyes wide with
terror at the threat; but after that he did not forget a single
name.

When he was big enough, they sent him to the Latin school at Wexioe,
where the other boys nicknamed him "the little botanist." His
thoughts were outdoors when they shoul