The Harvester (Romance Classic). Stratton-Porter Gene

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      “I keep them in my possession,” he said. “You may take a sample.”

      He lifted the leaves and drew forth a medium-sized bunch of long-stemmed blue violets with their leaves. The flowers were fresh, crisp, and strong odours of the woods arose from them.

      “Oh!” cried the maid. “Oh, how lovely!”

      She hurried away with them and returned carrying a purse.

      “I want two more bunches,” she said. “How much are they?”

      “Are the girls who want them dark or fair?”

      “What difference does that make?”

      “I have blue violets for blondes, yellow for brunettes, and white for the others.”

      “Well I never! One is fair, and two have brown hair and blue eyes.”

      “One blue and two whites,” said the Harvester calmly, as if matching women's hair and eyes with flowers were an inherited vocation. “They are twenty cents a bunch.”

      “Aha!” he chortled to himself as he whistled to Betsy. “At last we have it. There are no dark-eyed girls here. Now we are making headway.”

      Down the street he went, with varying fortune, but with patience and persistence at every house he at last managed to learn whether there was a dark-eyed girl. There did not seem to be many. Long before his store of yellow violets was gone the last blue and white had disappeared. But he calmly went on asking for dark-eyed girls, and explaining that all the blue and white were taken, because fair women were most numerous.

      At one house the owner, who reminded the Harvester of his mother, came to the door. He uncovered and in his suavest tones inquired if a brunette young woman lived there and if she would like a nosegay of yellow violets.

      “Well bless my soul!” cried she. “What is this world coming to? Do you mean to tell me that there are now able-bodied men offering at our doors, flowers to match our girls' complexions?”

      “Yes madam?” said the Harvester gravely, “and also selling them as fast as he can show them, at prices that make a profit very well worth while. I had an equal number of blue and white, but I see the dark girls are very much in the minority. The others were gone long ago, and I now have flowers to offer brunettes only.”

      “Well forever more! And you don't call that fiddlin' business for a big, healthy, young man?”

      The Harvester's gay laugh was infectious.

      “I do not,” he said. “I have to start as soon as I can see, tramp long distances in wet woods and gather the violets on my knees, make them into bunches, and bring them here in water to keep them fresh. I have another occupation. I only kill time on these, but I would be ashamed to tell you what I have gotten for them this morning.”

      “Humph! I'm glad to hear it!” said the woman. “Shame in some form is a sign of grace. I have no use for a human being without a generous supply of it. There is a very beautiful dark-eyed girl in the house, and I will take two bunches for her. How much are they?”

      “I have only three remaining,” said the Harvester. “Would you like to allow her to make her own selection?”

      “When I'm giving things I usually take my choice. I want that, and that one.”

      “As my stock is so nearly out, I'll make the two for twenty,” said the Harvester. “Won't you accept the last one from me, because you remind me just a little of my mother?”

      “I will indeed,” said she. “Thank you very much! I shall love to have them as dearly as any of the girls. I used to gather them when I was a child, but I almost never see the blue ones any more, and I don't know as I ever expected to see a yellow violet again as long as I live. Where did you get them?”

      “In my woods,” said the Harvester. “You see I grow several members of the viola pedata family, bird's foot, snake, and wood violet, and three of the odorata, English, marsh, and sweet, for our big drug houses. They use the flowers in making delicate tests for acids and alkalies. The entire plant, flower, seed, leaf, and root, goes into different remedies. The beds seed themselves and spread, so I have more than I need for the chemists, and I sell a few. I don't use the white and yellow in my business; I just grow them for their beauty. I also sell my surplus lilies of the valley. Would you like to order some of them for your house or more violets for to-morrow?”

      “Well bless my soul! Do you mean to tell me that lilies of the valley are medicine?”

      The Harvester laughed.

      “I grow immense beds of them in the woods on the banks of Loon Lake,” he said. “They are the convallaris majallis of the drug houses and I scarcely know what the weak-hearted people would do without them. I use large quantities in trade, and this season I am selling a few because people so love them.”

      “Lilies in medicine; well dear me! Are roses good for our innards too?”

      Then the Harvester did laugh.

      “I imagine the roses you know go into perfumes mostly,” he answered. “They do make medicine of Canadian rock rose and rose bay, laurel, and willow. I grow the bushes, but they are not what you would consider roses.”

      “I wonder now,” said the woman studying the Harvester closely, “if you are not that queer genius I've heard of, who spends his time hunting and growing stuff in the woods and people call him the Medicine Man.”

      “I strongly suspect madam, I am that man,” said the Harvester.

      “Well bless me!” cried she. “I've always wanted to see you and here when I do, you look just like anybody else. I thought you'd have long hair, and be wild-eyed and ferocious. And your talk sounds like out of a book. Well that beats me!”

      “Me too!” said the Harvester, lifting his hat. “You don't want any lilies to-morrow, then?”

      “Yes I do. Medicine or no medicine, I've always liked 'em, and I'm going to keep on liking them. If you can bring me a good-sized bunch after the weak-kneed——”

      “Weak-hearted,” corrected the Harvester.

      “Well 'weak-hearted,' then; it's all the same thing. If you've got any left, as I was saying, you can fetch them to me for the smell.”

      The Harvester laughed all the way down town. There he went to Doctor Carey's office, examined a directory, and got the names of all the numbers where he had sold yellow violets. A few questions when the doctor came in settled all of them, but the flower scheme was better. Because the yellow were not so plentiful as the white and blue, next day he added buttercups and cowslips to his store for the dark girls. When he had rifled his beds for the last time, after three weeks of almost daily trips to town, and had paid high prices to small boys he set searching the adjoining woods until no more flowers could be found, he drove from the outskirts of the city one day toward the hospital, and as he stopped, down the street came Doctor Carey frantically waving to him. As the big car slackened, “Come on David, quick! I've seen her!” cried the doctor.

      The Harvester jumped from the wagon, threw the lines to Belshazzar, and landed in the panting car.

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