, a
haversack across my shoulders, a bottle-belt about my waist, and armed
with a butterfly net, the consensus of opinion was that poor Father De
Rance was stark staring mad. Appleboro hadn't heretofore witnessed the
proceedings of the Brethren of the Net, and I had to do much patient
explaining; even then I am sure I must have left many firmly convinced
that I was not, in their own phrase, "all there."

"Hey, you! Mister! Them worms is pizen! Them's _fever_-worms!" was
shrieked at me frenziedly by the country-folks, black and white, when
I was caught scooping up the hairy caterpillars of the tiger moths.
Even when it was understood that I wished caterpillars, cocoons, and
chrysalids, for the butterflies and moths they would later make, looks
of pitying contempt were cast upon me. That a grown man--particularly
a minister of the gospel, with not only his own but other people's
souls to save--should spend time hunting for worms, with which he
couldn't even bait a hook, awakened amazement.

"What any man in his right mind wants with a thing that ain't nothin'
but wriggles an' hair on the outside an' sqush on the inside, beats
me!" was said more than once.

"But all of them are interesting, some are valuable, and many grow
into very beautiful moths and butterflies," I ventured to defend
myself.

"S'posin' they do? You can't eat 'em or wear 'em or plant 'em, can
you?" And really, you understand, I couldn't!

"An' you mean to tell me to my face," said a scandalized farmer,
watching me assorting and naming the specimens taken from my field
box, "you mean to tell me you're givin' every one o' them bugs a
_name_, same's a baptized Christian? Adam named every livin' thing,
an' Adam called them things Caterpillars an' Butterflies. If it suited
him an' Eve and God A'mighty to have 'em called that an' nothin' else,
looks to me it had oughter suit anybody that's got a grain o'real
religion. If you go to call 'em anythin' else it's sinnin' agin the
Bible. I've heard all my life you Cath'lics don't take as much stock
in the Scripters as you'd oughter, but this thing o'callin' a wurrum
Adam named plain Caterpillar a--a--_what'd_ you say the dum beast's
name was? _My sufferin' Savior!_ is jest about the wust dern
foolishness yet! I lay it at the Pope's door, every mite o' it, an'
you'd better believe he'll have to answer for sech carryin's on, some
o' these days!"

So many other things having been laid at the Pope's door, I held