Last fall I desired to add to my rare collection a large hornet's nest.
I had an enbalmed tarantula and her porcelain lined nest, and I desired
to add to these the gray and airy home of the hornet. I procured one of
the large size after cold weather and hung it in my cabinet by a string.
I forgot about it until this spring. When warm weather came, something
reminded me of it. I think it was a hornet. He jogged my memory in some
way and called my attention to it. Memory is not located where I thought
it was. It seemed as though whenever he touched me he awakened a
memory--a warm memory with a red place all around it.
Then some more hornets came and began to rake up old personalities. I
remember that one of them lit on my upper lip. He thought it was a
rosebud. When he went away it looked like a gladiolus bulb. I wrapped a
wet sheet around it to take out the warmth and reduce the swelling so
that I could go through the folding-doors and tell my wife about it.
Hornets lit all over me and walked around on my person. I did not dare
to scrape them off, because they are so sensitive. You have to be very
guarded in your conduct toward a hornet.
I remember once while I was watching the busy little hornet gathering
honey and June bugs from the bosom of a rose, years ago. I stirred him
up with a club, more as a practical joke than anything else, and he came
and lit on my sunny hair--that was when I wore my own hair--and he
walked around through my gleaming tresses quite awhile, making tracks as
large as a watermelon all over my head. If he hadn't run out of tracks
my head would have looked like a load of summer squashes. I remember I
had to thump my head against the smoke house in order to smash him, and
I had to comb him out with a fine comb and wear a waste paper basket two
weeks for a hat.
Much has been said of the hornet, but he has an odd, quaint way after
all, that is forever new.