The next day Elsie was so eager for the hour to come when she should learn the secret of the animals that she had been waiting in the hammock quite a little while when her mother came down stairs and as soon as she appeared in sight Elsie clapped her hands joyously, crying out:

“Now I shall hear how the animals get their honey, sha’n’t I, mumsey? But, mumsey, there isn’t anything like the petals of a buttercup on an animal, unless it’s his ears—do animals have their honey there—where they join the body—like the buttercups?” 44

Mrs. Edson could not help laughing at this funny notion.

“No, darling,” she answered, “animals have no honey anywhere. In the plants there is honey because they must have something to attract the insects to them, for they are rooted in the ground and can’t move around to carry their pollen to the other plants. And this pollen must be carried, you remember, for that is the way, and the only way, in which little ones are made to be born. So the flower has the honey in order to pay the insect for marrying it. But animals can move around. They can go to each other and carry their own pollen, so they do not need honey or anything but themselves to attract each other. In animals there is love instead of honey. They love each other, in their way, and 45 so come together and mingle their eggs and pollen. Only it is not called pollen in animals, as I said before. It is called zoÖsperms, pronounced ‘zoo-o-sperms.’ That is another name that you must not forget, for it is to the animal what pollen is to the plant. And in order that little animals may be born it is quite as necessary that the zoÖsperms cover or fertilize the eggs, as, with the plants, it is for the pollen to fertilize the seeds.”

“But, mamma,” said Elsie, wonderingly, “you said, I think, that every plant had an ovary—”

“No, darling, I said that every female plant had an ovary.”

“Oh, yes, female plant! That has an ovary, and every male plant has a stamen, and I think you said that they must have, didn’t you?” 46

“Yes, dear, in order to reproduce their kind they must have—why?”

“Well, then, does every male animal have a stamen and every female an ovary?”

“Certainly darling! And let me repeat that the products of the two must be mingled in order to bring forth little animals. That is just what I am going to tell you about today.”

“And do you mean, mamma, that honey in the plants grows into love in the animals?” Elsie asked, her eyes very wide.

“Oh, that is a very beautiful thought for my little girl to have!” Mrs. Edson exclaimed, smoothing Elsie’s hair lovingly. “And, yes, that is the truth, put very poetically. Love is sweet, like the honey that it replaces—at least 47 it is for us human beings. Probably with the animals it is not of just the same quality that it is with us, for they do not act as if it were, but at least the animals are an improvement on the plants in this respect, and the love that they feel for each other finally evolves, in us, to become the sweet thing that we find it to be.”

“Isn’t that lovely—and so strange!” exclaimed Elsie.

“Yes, darling, it is lovely, and very strange. There are various kinds of love, as well as various degrees of the same kind, but this is a subject a little too deep for us to take up just yet. What I wish now is to teach you how the animals marry. And I will begin by saying that all forms of reproduction, which is the name given to having children, 48 follow the same principle. The animals marry in a way that is only a variation of the plant way, and men and women marry in a way that is a variation of the plant and animal ways. But let us begin right, with the first appearance of life on earth.”

“Yes, mamma,” Elsie cried eagerly. “But the first life! That must have been very, very long ago, wasn’t it?”

“It was so far back in the history of the world that we can scarcely more than guess how long ago it must have been. We do not even know where it first appeared or just how it came to be. Some scientists believe that it occurred at the mouth of the Nile River, in Africa, in the rich soil that the river deposits there when it overflows its banks. Others think it was in the sea, or along 49 the shores of some ocean in a tropical country. But we need not go into that here. What we do know is that the hot sun, shining on a certain spot on the earth or sea, which was just in the right condition, produced the first body containing life that the globe ever had, and that this body was only a little speck of jelly-like substance, which we call protoplasm, pro-to-plas-m. The word means ‘first growth’, for it was the first thing that ever appeared that was capable of growing. We also call it a cell. Now there was only one cell in the world. It had no companions. And what do you suppose happened?”

“It must have been very lonesome,” suggested Elsie, sympathetically.

“Yes, it must have been—certainly it must if it could feel or think. But, 50 at all events, whether or not it did feel lonely, it began right away to make companions. Of course you can’t think how it did that, can you, dear?”

“I—I am afraid not,” Elsie hesitated.

“Yet it was the very simplest way imaginable. It merely divided itself into two parts, each of which was just like the other.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Elsie. “But, then, mamma, who could tell which was the father or mother, and which was the child? Or were they just brother and sister, or two brothers?”

“There was not then what we now call ‘sex’, for that was only the beginning of families, so to say, and it was very crude, as all things are when they are first started. But perhaps we might call one cell the mother of the other, 51 since it is always the female, and not the male, that brings forth children, though nobody could tell which was the mother and which was the child.”

“Well,” said Elsie, “that is the strangest thing yet!”

“It seems so to us, because it is so different from our way of reproducing, but it was the natural way, and the same process is going on to this day. Even little girls are born in a manner which, though it appears very different, is the same in principle, as we shall see.”

“But, mamma, I thought that all living beings were obliged to have a stamen or an ovary!”

“So they are obliged, dear! This cell grew until it was too large and heavy to be supported by its structure, or lack of structure, and then it fell apart. 52 Force, or growth, was the stamen here, and the cell itself was the ovary.”

“Oh, then force or growth was the first stamen, mamma?”

“No, darling, it was not, unless we should call growth the stamen of today—which we might do, in a way. But the first stamen was, in form, a ray of the sun, and the first ovary was the earth, soil. For don’t you recall that this cell, which was the first life-form, was produced by the sun shining on the earth or sea?”

Elsie pondered on this a moment. Then her face brightened.

“Oh, now I see!” she exclaimed. “And what a beautiful set of changes, like real poetry! The stamen in a flower, and growth, and a ray of sunlight are all one at bottom!” 53

“Yes, darling, it is beautiful poetry, when one comes thoroughly to understand it. And when we find that love is the source of all these different forms and processes it becomes more beautiful than ever. Now let us go on a little further and you will see how that is.”

“Please hurry, mamma!” said Elsie. “I wish to find out where I came from, and you are going to tell me that, aren’t you?”

“Certainly, darling! That is what I have been leading up to all this time. Now we will speak of a number of higher growths than the single cells are, for there are several things yet to be made plain before you will be able to understand the highest growth of all, which is that of a human being like yourself.”