ese boarding-houses, these
boarding-houses! What forlorn people one sees stranded on their desolate
shores! Decayed gentlewomen with the poor wrecks of what once made their
households beautiful, disposed around them in narrow chambers as they
best may be, coming down day after day, poor souls! to sit at the board
with strangers; their hearts full of sad memories which have no language
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 wi