onalities. I
remember that one of them lit on my upper lip. He thought it was a
rosebud. When he went away it looked like a gladiolus bulb. I wrapped a
wet sheet around it to take out the warmth and reduce the swelling so
that I could go through the folding-doors and tell my wife about it.

Hornets lit all over me and walked around on my person. I did not dare
to scrape them off, because they are so sensitive. You have to be very
guarded in your conduct toward a hornet.

I remember once while I was watching the busy little hornet gathering
honey and June bugs from the bosom of a rose, years ago. I stirred him
up with a club, more as a practical joke than anything else, and he came
and lit on my sunny hair--that was when I wore my own hair--and he
walked around through my gleaming tresses quite awhile, making tracks as
large as a watermelon all over my head. If he hadn't run out of tracks
my head would have looked like a load of summer squashes. I remember I
had to thump my head against the smoke house in order to smash him, and
I had to comb him out with a fine comb and wear a waste paper basket two
weeks for a hat.

Much has been said of the hornet, but he has an odd, quaint way after
all, that is forever new.

A TRAGEDY.

Out where the blue waves come and go,
Out where the zephyrs kiss the strand,
Down where the damp tides ebb and flow,
Where the ocean monkeys with the sand,
William, the hungry, rustles for his meal,
Slim William, the eldest, gathers the eel.

Up where the johnny jump-ups smile,
Up where the green hills meet the sky,
Where, out from her window for many a mile,
She watches the blue sea dimpling lie,
The wife of the eelist, with vizage grim,
Sits in the gloaming and watches for him.

Down in the moist and moaning sea,
Down where the day can never come,
With staring eyes that can never see
And lips that will ever continue dumb,
With eels in his breast, in a large wet wave,
William is filling a watery grave.

Up where the catnip is breathing hard,
Up where the tansy is flecked with dew,
Where the vesper soft as the onion peels
Wakens the echoes the twilight through,
The new-made widow still watches the shore
And sits there and waits, as I said before.

They come and tell her the pitiful tale,
With trembling voice and tear-dimmed eye,
They watch her cheek gr