Oh for a human fly-swatter! That is, for some sort of a swatter that
would obliterate the human fly.
The most prominent trait of a fly is his ability and disposition to
bother. He is essential, concentrated botheraciousness.
He is the arch intruder. He is the type of the unwelcome. His business
is to make you quit what you are doing and attend to him.
He makes the busy cook cease her bread-making to shoo him away. He
disturbs the sleeper to brush him off. He is president and chairman of
the executive committee of the amalgamated association of all pesterers,
irritators, and nuisances.
The human fly is the male or female of the genus homo who is like the
housefly.
Some children are flies. They are so ill bred and undisciplined that
they perpetually annoy their mother until her nerves are frazzled, and
make life miserable for any guests that may be in the house. It may be
well to be kind and thoughtful toward the little darlings, but the first
lesson a child should be taught is to govern himself as not to be a
bother.
There are respectful, considerate, and unobtrusive children alas—too
few!
There are fly wives. Realizing their own pettiness they gain their
revenge by systematically irritating the husband. They make a weapon of
their weakness. They soon acquire the art of pestering, nipping, and
buzzing, keep the man in a perpetual temper, and blame him for it. You
can’t talk to them. Nothing can cure them but an eleven-foot swatter.
And these are not for sale.
Some men are just as bad. Married to a superior woman such a man is
inwardly galled by his own conscious inferiority. So he bedevils her in
ways indirect. He enjoys seeing her in a state of suppressed
indignation. He keeps her on edge. His persecution is all the more
unbearable because it is the unconscious expression of his fly nature.
Also for him there is no cure but to wait till he lights some time and
swat him with some giant, Gargantuan swatter. And they’re all out of
these, too, at the store.
There are office flies, likewise, who get into your room, occupy your
extra chair, and buzz you for an hour upon some subject that you don’t
care a whoop in Halifax about. Your inherent politeness prevents you
from kicking them out, humanity will not let you poison them, and there
is a law against shooting them. There ought to be an open season for
office flies.
Where the human flies are proudest in their function of pestiferousness,
however, is in a meeting. Wherever you have a conference, a committee
meeting, or a convention, there they buzz, tickle, and deblatterate.
They keep the majority waiting while they air their incoherence. They
suggest, amend, and raise objections. They never do anything; it is
their business to annoy people who do things.
I do not wish to seem unkind to my fellow-creatures, but it does seem as
if to all legislatures, conventions, and other gatherings there should
be an anteroom where the human flies could be gently but efficaciously
swatted.
There are Senate flies, as well as House flies, politicians whose notion
of their duty appears to be that they should vex, tantalize, and heckle
the opposing party at every point.
There are fly newspapers, whose only policy seems to be petty, vicious
annoyance.
There are fly preachers, with a cheap efficiency in diatribe and
sarcasm, and no wholesome, constructive message.
There are fly school-teachers, who hector and scold; fly pupils, who
find and fasten upon the teacher’s sensitive spot; fly beggars, who will
not be put aside; fly reformers, who can only make trouble; fly
neighbors, who cannot mind their own business; fly shopkeepers, who will
not let you buy what you want.
And the name of the devil himself is Beelzebub; which being interpreted
means “Lord of Flies.”