dles and rebuses to clear up other
people's difficulties. It always seems to me that talk is a ripple and
thought is a ground swell. A string of words, that mean pretty much
anything, helps you in a certain sense to get hold of a thought, just as
a string of syllables that mean nothing helps you to a word; but it's a
poor business, it's a poor business, and the more you study definition
the more you find out how poor it is. Do you know I sometimes think our
little entomological neighbor is doing a sounder business than we people
that make books about ourselves and our slippery abstractions? A man can
see the spots on a bug and count 'em, and tell what their color is, and
put another bug alongside of him and see whether the two are alike or
different. And when he uses a word he knows just what he means. There
is no mistake as to the meaning and identity of pulex irritans, confound
him!

--What if we should look in, some day, on the Scarabeeist, as he calls
himself?--said I.--The fact is the Master had got agoing at such a rate
that I was willing to give a little turn to the conversation.

--Oh, very well,--said the Master,--I had some more things to say, but I
don't doubt they'll keep. And besides, I take an interest in entomology,
and have my own opinion on the meloe question.

--You don't mean to say you have studied insects as well as solar
systems and the order of things generally?

--He looked pleased. All philosophers look pleased when people say
to them virtually, "Ye are gods." The Master says he is vain
constitutionally, and thanks God that he is. I don't think he has enough
vanity to make a fool of himself with it, but the simple truth is he
cannot help knowing that he has a wide and lively intelligence, and
it pleases him to know it, and to be reminded of it, especially in an
oblique and tangential sort of way, so as not to look like downright
flattery.

Yes, yes, I have amused a summer or two with insects, among other
things. I described a new tabanus,--horsefly, you know,--which, I think,
had escaped notice. I felt as grand when I showed up my new discovery
as if I had created the beast. I don't doubt Herschel felt as if he had
made a planet when he first showed the astronomers Georgium Sidus, as he
called it. And that reminds me of something. I was riding on the outside
of a stagecoach from London to Windsor in the year--never mind the
year, but it must have been in June, I suppose, for I bought some