e
but a sigh, no record but the lines of sorrow on their features; orphans,
creatures with growing tendrils and nothing to cling to; lonely rich men,
casting about them what to do with the wealth they never knew how to
enjoy, when they shall no longer worry over keeping and increasing it;
young men and young women, left to their instincts, unguarded, unwatched,
save by malicious eyes, which are sure to be found and to find occupation
in these miscellaneous collections of human beings; and now and then a
shred of humanity like this little adust specialist, with just the
resources needed to keep the "radical moisture" from entirely exhaling
from his attenuated organism, and busying himself over a point of
science, or compiling a hymn-book, or editing a grammar or a
dictionary;--such are the tenants of boarding-houses whom we cannot think
of without feeling how sad it is when the wind is not tempered to the
shorn lamb; when the solitary, whose hearts are shrivelling, are not set
in families!

The Master was greatly interested in the Scarabee's Muscarium.

--I don't remember,--he said,--that I have heard of such a thing as that
before. Mighty curious creatures, these same house-flies! Talk about
miracles! Was there ever anything more miraculous, so far as our common
observation goes, than the coming and the going of these creatures? Why
didn't Job ask where the flies come from and where they go to? I did not
say that you and I don't know, but how many people do know anything about
it? Where are the cradles of the young flies? Where are the cemeteries
of the dead ones, or do they die at all except when we kill them? You
think all the flies of the year are dead and gone, and there comes a warm
day and all at once there is a general resurrection of 'em; they had been
taking a nap, that is all.

--I suppose you do not trust your spider in the Muscarium?--said I,
addressing the Scarabee.

--Not exactly,--he answered,--she is a terrible creature. She loves me,
I think, but she is a killer and a cannibal among other insects. I wanted
to pair her with a male spider, but it wouldn't do.

-Wouldn't do?--said I,--why not? Don't spiders have their mates as well
as other folks?

-Oh yes, sometimes; but the females are apt to be particular, and if they
don't like the mate you offer them they fall upon him and kill him and
eat him up. You see they are a great deal bigger and stronger than the
males, and they are always h