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spiders. I recalled a hideous experience of long ago, when, putting on
a dress that had hung on the wall for weeks, I felt a thing with a
hundred legs crawling down my bare arm, and shook a spider out of my
sleeve. I watched the lecturer, but I was _not_ going to run. It was
too bad that Mrs. Black had not warned me.

After a while I realized that the lecturer had no menagerie in his
pockets. He talked, in a familiar way, about different kinds of
spiders and their ways; and as he talked, he wove across the doorway,
where he stood, a gigantic spider's web, unwinding a ball of twine in
his hand, and looping various lengths on invisible tacks he had ready
in the door frame.

I was fascinated by the progress of the web. I forgot my terrors; I
began to follow Mr. Emerson's discourse. I was surprised to hear how
much there was to know about a dusty little spider, besides that he
could spin his webs as fast as my broom could sweep them away. The
drama of the spider's daily life became very real to me as the
lecturer went on. His struggle for existence; his wars with his
enemies; his wiles, his traps, his patient labors; the intricate
safeguards of his simple existence; the fitness of his body for his
surroundings, of his instincts for his vital needs--the whole picture
of the spider's pursuit of life under the direction of definite laws
filled me with a great wonder and left no room in my mind for
repugnance or fear. It was the first time the natural history of a
living creature had been presented to me under such circumstances that
I could not avoid hearing and seeing, and I was surprised at my
dulness in the past when I had rejected books on natural history.

I did not become an enthusiastic amateur naturalist at once; I did not
at once begin to collect worms and bugs. But on the next sweeping-day
I stood on a chair, craning my neck, to study the spider webs I
discovered in the corners of the ceiling; and one or two webs of more
than ordinary perfection I suffered to remain undisturbed for weeks,
although it was my duty, as a house-cleaner, to sweep the ceiling
clean. I began to watch for the mice that were wont to scurry across
the floor when the house slept and I alone waked. I even placed a
crust for them on the threshold of my room, and cultivated a
breathless intimacy with them, when the little gray beasts
acknowledged my hospitality by nibbling my crust in full sight. And so
by degrees I came to a better understa