his pocket
another bottle. He put everything down on the table and began
to think, because he wanted to write his thoughts on the
paper.-- You must certainly have come across paper in the
woods or in the garden. The black on the paper is what man
has excogitated--excogitated."

"Marvelous!" cried Maya, all a-glow that she was to learn so
much.

"For this purpose," Hannibal continued, "man needs both bottles.
He inserts a stick into the one and drinks out of the other. The
more he drinks, the better it goes. Of course it is about us
insects that he writes, everything he knows about us, and he
writes strenuously, but the result is not much to boast of,
because up to now man has found out very little in regard to
insects. He is absolutely ignorant of our soul-life and hasn't
the least consideration for our feelings. You'll see."

"Don't you think well of human beings?" asked Maya.

"Oh, yes, yes. But the loss of a leg"--the daddy-long-legs
looked down slantwise--"is apt to embitter one, rather."

"I see," said Maya.

"One evening I was sitting on a window-frame as usual, prepared
for the chase, and the man was sitting at the table, his two
bottles before him, trying to produce something. It annoyed me
dreadfully that a whole swarm of little flies and gnats, upon
which I depend for my subsistence, had settled upon the
artificial sun and were staring into it in that crude, stupid,
uneducated way of theirs."

"Well," observed Maya, "I think I'd look at a thing like that
myself."

"Look, for all I care. But to look and to stare like an idiot
are two entirely different things. Just watch once and see the
silly jig they dance around a lamp. It's nothing for them to
butt their heads about twenty times. Some of them keep it up
until they burn their wings. And all the time they stare and
stare at the light."

"Poor creatures! Evidently they lose their wits."

"Then they had better stay outside on the window-frame or under
the leaves. They're safe from the lamp there, and that's where I
can catch them.-- Well, on that fateful night I saw from my
position on the window-frame that some gnats were lying
scattered on the table beside the lamp drawing their last
breath. The man did not seem to notice or care about them, so I
decided to go and take them myself. That's perfectly natural,
isn't it?"

"Perfectly."

"And yet, it was my undoing. I crept up the leg of the table,
very softly, on my guard, until I could peep