or so, you readily understand, has been my private
talk with you, the Reader. The cue of the conversation which I
interrupted by this digression is to be found in the words "a good
motto;" from which I begin my account of the visit again.

--Do you receive many visitors,--I mean vertebrates, not articulates?
--said the Master.

I thought this question might perhaps bring il disiato riso, the
long-wished-for smile, but the Scarabee interpreted it in the simplest
zoological sense, and neglected its hint of playfulness with the most
absolute unconsciousness, apparently, of anything not entirely serious
and literal.

--You mean friends, I suppose,--he answered.--I have correspondents, but
I have no friends except this spider. I live alone, except when I go to
my subsection meetings; I get a box of insects now and then, and send a
few beetles to coleopterists in other entomological districts; but
science is exacting, and a man that wants to leave his record has not
much time for friendship. There is no great chance either for making
friends among naturalists. People that are at work on different things
do not care a great deal for each other's specialties, and people that
work on the same thing are always afraid lest one should get ahead of the
other, or steal some of his ideas before he has made them public. There
are none too many people you can trust in your laboratory. I thought I
had a friend once, but he watched me at work and stole the discovery of a
new species from me, and, what is more, had it named after himself.
Since that time I have liked spiders better than men. They are hungry
and savage, but at any rate they spin their own webs out of their own
insides. I like very well to talk with gentlemen that play with my
branch of entomology; I do not doubt it amused you, and if you want to
see anything I can show you, I shall have no scruple in letting you see
it. I have never had any complaint to make of amatoors.

--Upon my honor,--I would hold my right hand up and take my Bible-oath,
if it was not busy with the pen at this moment,--I do not believe the
Scarabee had the least idea in the world of the satire on the student of
the Order of Things implied in his invitation to the "amatoor." As for
the Master, he stood fire perfectly, as he always does; but the idea that
he, who had worked a considerable part of several seasons at examining
and preparing insects, who believed himself to have given a new tab