walls are covered with silk, and the tapestry is
gobelin. I am a wonderful creature. I have eight eyes, and of course can
see your best interest. Philosophers have written volumes about my antennae
and cephalothorax." House-fly walks gently in. The web rocks like a cradle
in the breeze. The house-fly feels honored to be the guest of such a big
spider. We all have regard for big bugs. "But what is this?" cries the fly,
pointing to a broken wing, "and this fragment of an insect's foot. There
must have been a murder here! Let me go back!" "Ha! ha!" says the spider,
"the gate is locked, the drawbridge is up. I only contracted to bring you
in. I cannot afford to let you out. Take a drop of this poison, and it will
quiet your nerves. I throw this hook of a fang over your neck to keep you
from falling off." Word went back to the house-fly's family, and a choir of
great green-bottled insects sang this psalm at the funeral:

"An unfortunate fly a-visiting went,
And in a gossamer web found himself pent."

The first five years of a dissipated life are comparatively easy, for it is
all down hill; but when the man wakes up and finds his tongue wound with
blasphemies, and his eyes swimming in rheum, and the antennae of vice
feeling along his nerves, and the spiderish poison eating through his very
life, and, he resolves to return, he finds it hard traveling, for it is up
hill, and the fortresses along the road open on him their batteries. We go
into sin, hop, skip and jump; we come out of it creeping on all fours.

Let flies and dogs and men keep out of mischief. It is smooth all the way
there, and rough all the way back. It is ice-cream for Carlo clear down to
the bottom of the can, but afterward it is blinded eyes and sore neck and
great fright. It is only eighteen inches to go into the freezer; it is
three miles out. For Robert Burns it is rich wine and clapping hands and
carnival all the way going to Edinburgh; but going back, it is worn-out
body, and lost estate, and stinging conscience, and broken heart, and a
drunkard's grave.

Better moderate our desires. Carlo had that morning as good a breakfast as
any dog need to have. It was a law of the household that he should be well
fed. Had he been satisfied with bread and meat, all would have been well.
But he sauntered out for luxuries. He wanted ice-cream. He got it, but
brought upon his head the perils and damages of which I have written. As
long as we have reasonable want