up and down in the most undecided manner,
as if in doubt whether or not to tackle the uncertain customer. But
Eliza, whose spirits always rose like Nelson's before the face of
danger, and whose motto seemed to be '_De l'audace, de l'audace, et
toujours de l'audace_,' would rush at the huge foe in a perfect
transport of wild fury, and go to work at once to enclose him in her
toils of triple silken cables. I always fancied, indeed, that Eliza was
in a thoroughly housewifely tantrum at seeing her nice new web so
ruthlessly torn and tattered by the unwelcome visitor, and that she
said to herself in her own language: 'Oh well, then, if you _will_ have
it, you _shall_ have it; so here goes for you.' And go for him she did,
with most unladylike ferocity. Indeed, Eliza's best friend, I must fain
admit, could never have said of her that she was a perfect lady.

The chawing-up of that wasp was a sight to behold. I have no great
sympathy with wasps--they have done me so many bad turns in my time
that I don't pretend to regard them as deserving of exceptional
pity--but I must say Eliza's way of going at them was unduly barbaric.
She treated them for all the world as if they were entirely devoid of a
nervous system. I wouldn't treat a _Saturday Reviewer_ myself as that
spider treated the wasps when once she was sure of them. She went at
them with a sort of angry, half-contemptuous dash, kept cautiously out
of the way of the protruded sting, began in most business-like fashion
at the head, and rolling the wasp round and round with her legs and
feelers, swathed him rapidly and effectually, with incredible speed, in
a dense network of web poured forth from her spinnerets. In less than
half a minute the astonished wasp, accustomed rather to act on the
offensive than the defensive, found himself helplessly enclosed in a
perfect coil of tangled silk, which confined him from head to sting
without the possibility of movement in any direction. The whole time
this had been going on the victim, struggling and writhing, had been
pushing out its sting and doing the very best it knew to deal the wily
Eliza a poisoned death-blow. But Eliza, taught by ancestral experience,
kept carefully out of the way; and the wasp felt itself finally twirled
round and round in those powerful hands, and tied about as to its wings
by a thousand-fold cable. Sometimes, after the wasp was secured, Eliza
even took the trouble to saw off the wings so as to prevent furthe