stream, through my memory,--from which I please myself with
thinking that I have learned to wind without fretting against the shore,
or forgetting cohere I am flowing,--sinuous, I say, but not jerky,--no,
not jerky nor hard to follow for a reader of the right sort, in the
prime of life and full possession of his or her faculties.

--All this last page 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 h