spring weather came it lay in state on my work-table, in a box
lined with cotton, where I could watch it all day long. Nothing
happened till one bright day in June I heard a faint scratching inside
the brown case. It grew louder and louder every moment. Evidently my
tenant was bestirring himself and, with intervals of rest, was scraping
and tearing away his silken wrappings. Presently an opening was made and
out of this were poked two bushy legs with claws that held fast by the
outside of his house, while the creature gradually pulled himself out.

"First a head with horns; then a part of the body and two more legs;
then, with one tremendous effort, he was free!--an odd beast of no
particular color, looking exceedingly damp and disagreeable, with his
fat chunky body and short legs, like an exaggerated bumble-bee, only not
at all pretty. He was shaky on his legs and half tumbled from his box
to the window-sill, along which he walked trembling till he came to the
tassel of the shade, just within his reach. This he grabbed with all
four claws, his wings hanging down.

"'It's nothing but a homely old brown bug!' said my brother Charlie,
whom I had called to see the sight.

"'No,' I said, "'it isn't a bug. I'm sure I don't know what it is,'

"I was ready to cry with disappointment and vexation, for I had expected
great things from my brown chrysalis.

"The tassel was gently swaying with the weight of the clumsy creature,
and in the warm sunshine which was gradually drying body and wings faint
colors began to show--a dull red, a dash of white, a wavy band of gray,
with patches of soft brown that began to look downy like feathers. Every
moment these colors grew more distinct and took new shapes. None of
them were bright, but they were beautifully blended and the whole body
was of the texture of the finest velvet.

"But the wings! How can I describe to you how those thick, crumpled,
unsightly appendages grew and grew, changing in color from a dingy black
to a dark brown, with bands of gray and red? how the great white patches
took distinct form, and some were dashed with red and bordered with
black, and others eye-shaped with crescents of pale blue? It must have
taken an hour for all this to come about--for the great wings to unfurl
to their widest extent and the cecropia moth to show himself in all his
beauty to our admiring gaze.

"The whole family had gathered to see the show. My father lingered, hat
and riding-whip