markings with unmoved eye; to view their output with normal pulse;
to hear “the cock’s shrill clarion” without pricking up my ears; to
read of the latest thing in incubators without turning a hair: for I
have survived the fever; I am an immune.
XXXIX
“AMICUS REDIVIVUS”
Josephus says, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc,” and it might well be
applied to the concerns of this day, for what one of us has not at
some time or other felt a “pactum illicitum,” a “qualis ab incepto,”
as it were, permeating his whole being, and bringing vividly before
the retina the transitory state of all things worldly? As Chaucer
said:
For who so wolde senge the cattes skin,
Than wol the cat wel dwellen in here in.
For it cannot be gainsaid that, despite the tendency toward
materialism, the cosmic rush and the spiritual captivity that lead so
many brave souls into the martyrdom of Achiacharus, there is in all
of us a certain quality that must and will assert itself.
It seems but yesterday that Shelley, in his poem on “Mutability,”
said:
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
but how pat is the application to-day! We _are_ as clouds. You who
boast yourself of your ancestry, you whose dignity is as a cloak of
ermine, ye are but clouds. How well Goethe knew this! We all remember
those lambent lines of his--I cannot translate adequately, so I will
quote from the original German:
Fräulein Anna, das Papier in Deutschland ist wie das Papier in
Amerika.
Ages ago Sophocles had worded it in almost the same phrase:
Oh, race of mortal men oppressed with care!
What nothings are we, like to shadows vain,
Cumb’ring the ground and wandering to and fro.
The greatest poets, from Le Gallienne down to Shakspere, have been
aware of this evanescent property in the cumbrous and exsufflicate
prowlers amid these “glimpses of the moon.” Well may we say with
Cæsar, “Quamdiu se bene gesserit.”
[Illustration]
There is always a touch of ozone in the words of Horace, and we
find him saying of this very thing, “Precieuse ridicules pretiosa
supellex.” Could it have been said better? How airily he pricks the
bubble of man’s self-esteem! “Dressed in a little brief authority,”
man plays his part amid mundane happenings tremelloid and sejant,
and with a sort of innate connascence, a primitive conglutinate
efflorescence, he approaches nearer and nearer, day by day, to that
time when, as Shakspere hath it, “the beachy girdle of the ocean”
will resolve itself into its component parts, and man as man will
cease to exist.
But, to pass to a more inchoate view of these things,--to the “opum
furiata cupido” of the ancient Latins,--what is there in all this
that tends to lessen a man’s self-glorification, his auto-apotheosis?
Victor Hugo can tell us:
Petit bourgeois père La Chaise
Pour prendre congé tour de force
Connaisseur tout Thérèse
Façon de parler Edmund Gosse.
The author of “Les Misérables” was himself a man, and he knew. And
no less a man was Coplas de Manrique, and in his beautiful lyric,
“Caballeros,” he says:
Tiene Vd.-Usted mi sombrero
Tiene Vd.-Usted mi chaleco
No lo tengo, no lo tengo
Tiene Vd.-Usted mi.
“Noblesse oblige,” and it behooves all of us, however mighty our
positions in life, to unbend a little and try to mollify these
manducable and irresoluble phases of molecular existence, to the end
that we may accomplish a “vis medicatrix naturae” and a “vade mecum”
that shall be valuable to us in our journey to the tomb and through
nether space.
So, then, may we “with an unfaltering trust approach our grave,” and,
as Schiller says so musically:
Ich kann nicht mit der linken Hand schreiben.
XL
THE PROPER CARE OF FLIES
It is a fact beyond cavil that ninety-nine flies out of a hundred
perish every year for lack of proper care on the part of housewives;
that the attention that is lavished upon the house-cat, if expended
upon the house-fly, would cause him to stay with us throughout the
twelvemonth.
I have devoted years of patient study to the busy buzzers, and I
speak as one having authority. Flies need warmth as much as humans
do--nay, more than their biped brethren, for we can stand the early
autumn frosts without a fire, but it is those few days that kill
off the little fellows that have been our winged companions through
the summer season, singing in the new day, sampling our butter and
meats, and tickling us half to death with their erratic pilgrimages
and divagations. A little forethought on our part, a speedier
lighting of the furnace fires, and flies in midwinter would no longer
be a rarity.
This well-nigh universal carelessness is due to a woeful ignorance
as to the habits of the fly, and not to intentional cruelty. Why,
we know more about the ways of the wapiti than of the most common
occupant of our houses. To give an instance, most people refer to the
fly as a scavenger, a lover of tainted meats and vegetables. This is
only because he is so often forced to eat tainted meat or go without
altogether. There are fresh milk and fish for the cat, dainty tidbits
for the dog, millet and rape for the canary; yet how many Christian
people think to provide something tempting for the flies? But too
often we begrudge them the crumbs that fall from the table.
So far from flies loving “high” meat, it is an acquired taste with
them. This had long been a theory with me, but it is only a year
since I proved it by an interesting experiment. I secured a setting
of flies’ eggs,--not thoroughbred eggs, but just the ordinary
barn-yard variety,--and I set them under a motherly bluebottle
fly, after I had made her a comfortable nest in a pill-box. I saw
to it that she had the proper food for a setting fly--not mush and
milk, but flakes of hominy and grains of sugar once a day. I also
dusted her nest thoroughly with insecticide and covered her with
a tea-strainer so that she would be secure from molestation from
other flies. For three weeks she was faithful to her duties, and
then, one morning, I saw that she had experienced the sweet joys of
motherhood, for there, on the edge of her nest, sat thirteen--mark
the number--cunning little flies, pluming and preening themselves
with innate skill. I could scarce keep back the tears.
[Illustration]
For a few days I let the little flock follow their mother, and then
I shut them up away from her in my guest-chamber and began their
education. The sweetest milk was theirs from the start, and after
a week of bread diet, that their feathers might be strengthened, I
began to give them small scraps of porter-house steak and Southdown
mutton. It was wonderful to see how the little beggars throve. One
night I slept in the guest-chamber, and they awoke me before the
robin’s matin song, although they were not three weeks old. Their
tread had a firmness, a titillating power, that never comes to a
tramp fly or to one improperly nurtured. Then, their buzzing was so
sonorous that sleep was impossible once they tuned up, so I was in
no danger of becoming a drowse-abed.
When they were two months old I determined to test my theory. I
procured some meat from the larder of a gormand friend of mine, and
brought it into my guest-chamber in an air-tight box. Then I opened
the box and awaited developments. If flies are natural-born birds of
carrion, then they would rush upon this stuff with avidity. I hid
behind the arras--if I am quite sure what arrases are--and watched my
little pets with some concern. They flew over to the meat, sniffed
it disdainfully, buzzed with ire for a few seconds, and then flew to
the ceiling with every appearance of disgust. Then the largest one
signaled to his fellows, and they flew down once more, lifted the
“condemned beef” in their talons as firemen seize a life-preserving
net, and sailed to the open window, where they dropped it. In five
minutes’ time it was black with flies that had not received proper
nurture. Was I pleased? I was delighted. I set forth a feast of sugar
on top of my bald head, and sat in the guest-chamber until my pets
had made an end of eating.
The nineteenth century is nearing its close, and the house-fly is not
a perfect insect; but, housekeeper, it lies with you to improve the
breed. Exercise a little care in the choice of their food, and when
the biting days of early fall come upon the land, make provision for
warming your little guests of the summer days, and if the winds of
winter whistle sharp they will be answered by the hot little buzz of
myriads of flies.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Contractions such as “he ’s” and “she ’d” (with a space) have
been changed to “he’s” and “she’d” (without a space).
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg xii: ‘Harper’s Bazar’ replaced by ‘Harper’s Bazaar’.
Pg 124: ‘what the concensus’ replaced by ‘what the consensus’.
Pg 237: ‘dainty titbits’ replaced by ‘dainty tidbits’.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Four-Masted Cat-Boat, by Charles Battell Loomis