melodious to human ear, it is true, but it throbs with the passion of affection, and must have been sweet music to his mate on the branch near by. Unlucky lover! your love sonnet has sounded your doom. It shall be your death song. See! my beautiful Wasp has pounced upon the amorous Cicada, and pierced and paralyzed like the spider before him, he is being borne to a grave in that grassy bank. There, in the Wasp's burrow, buried alive though with a semblance of death, he shall feed the maw of a hungry worm.

"It is mother love!" exclaimed the unseen Brownie Queen, sadly I thought and tenderly. "But mother love seems cruel sometimes; and it alone has not taught the Wasp to spare the mating love of its fellow insects."

This is not all that I saw, but this is such as I saw on that memorable occasion. My experience started a train of meditation that was the reverse of agreeable. But what could I say? I had been observing the facts of Nature, nothing more nor less. I looked away over the landscape again and my feelings were not what they were before. Underneath the surface of all this beauty and summer repose I seemed to feel the beating of a fevered pulse. Yes, the Doctor of the Gentiles spake truly: "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain."[G] Yes, I was beginning to read between the lines! Verily, I perceived that the insect world in the matter of anxiety, struggles and sufferings, in passions of love, hate and covetousness, is after all in some sort a miniature of our own world of human beings.

I do not know how long I sat pondering these things, but I was presently conscious that my Brownie friends had returned.

"You have changed your opinion about some of the inferior creatures, have you not?" began Queen Fancy. "I know that it must be so. And now it remains for you to change your opinion about us. You think we are perfectly happy, never touched by such conflicts and cares as mortals and insects have. No! it is with us as it is with you and all the rest. One idea runs through all Nature and all her creatures high and low. All alike, from gnats and fairies to mastodons and men, have friends and foes, perils and pleasures, pains and joys, loves and hates, bitter disappointments and proud attainments; watchings, cares, strifes, battles, defeats, heart desolations, sickness, oppressions, despoilment, death—all these and the reverse of all these happen to us all."

"It is true!" I answered, "I see now that it is quite true. The fact that creatures are small and unknown to us, and outside our ordinary region of feeling and thought, does not hinder them from having joys and sorrows, trials and triumphs even as we have. I will never think of Nature again, and of the insect world in particular, without remembering this double side of its life history."

"That is very good," said Queen Fancy, "and now we wish you to remember also that Brownies are a part of Nature and share the general rule. Our lives are so interwoven with all natural surroundings, and with yourselves as well, that we feel keenly everything that goes on around us. But enough for this time. I promised you something further about our history. Now I make the promise good. I am to deliver to you the records of some of our kin which have lately fallen into our hands. You will read them; write them out carefully, and give them to Mr. Mayfield to edit and print. Nobody can do that so well as he. Indeed, his name and his stories about our Old Farm Tenants have gone among our people on the far Ohio border; and that is the reason why these records of the Brownies and their wars have been sent hither to be given into his care. There, I have done."

Queen Fancy clapped her hands and a herald at her side blew upon a tiny shell, a wee miniature, for all the world, of the conch shell which Sarah the cook blows for dinner. Suddenly, a vast host of little folk issued from the grass plat along the slope toward the springhouse. They were arranged rank upon rank, whole companies in column, and they all were drawing at ropes no bigger than a lady's hair. Presently, I saw the round top of a rolled parcel emerge above the summit of the slope. It moved slowly, and I was puzzled to know by what force it was impelled, until I saw that it was mounted upon a toy cart which was being drawn by the Brownie host. On the night before I had been reading (it was a curious coincidence!) Wilkinson's account of the Ancient Egyptians, and had been especially interested in the manner in which their bulky architecture had been reared, and particularly in a picture that showed a colossal stone statue of some sovereign being drawn upon a sled by an army of laborers. The Brownie exploit reminded me of these old Egyptians. Here were the little folk of our Old Farm showing mimic reproduction of life on the Nile in the days of Abraham! Strange!

The Brownie host never stopped until the parcel reached my feet. Then the Queen called a halt, and, turning to me, said: "Abby, Schoolmistress, we commit this precious roll to you. Receive it as a sacred trust; do our will concerning it, and be forevermore the Brownies' good friend." She clapped her hands, the herald blew his shell bugle, and in a moment the entire host had melted away into the foliage and were lost to sight.

The Boy's Illustration.
Fig. 9.—Brownies Bringing the Roll of Records.

I have not seen them since, but I have tried to fulfill my part of the trust which came to me so curiously in the drowsy hours of that June day, and now I deliver my work to you that you in turn may fulfill your portion of the apportioned duty. That you will not fail is the confident hope of

Your obedient servant,

Abby Bradford.

"What do you think of that?" I asked, as I finished Abby's letter, for I had read it aloud to the Mistress.[Pg xxviii]

"Perhaps," said the Mistress, looking up from her embroidery, "we had better open the parcel."

A familiar twinkle colored her smile, that raised a momentary suspicion that she perhaps knew something more of the contents than she chose to tell. The advice was good, albeit deftly dodging my question, so I cut the wrappings and exposed a roll of fair manuscript. "It is a story," I remarked, after glancing over the pages, "a sort of historical fairy tale, I fancy. But, hold! what is this?" My eye had fallen upon some sentences that arrested attention, and I read several continuous pages.

The Mistress interrupted the reading: "Well, what has interested you? And what have you to say about the whole affair?"

"I have been reading here a curious adaptation of the habits of my spider pets, and it is neatly put. And here is another of the same sort." I turned to a chapter further on, and read with great satisfaction a few pages more. "Really," I exclaimed, "the natural history is good, and is fairly inwoven with the tale. I have changed my opinion of the work; it is evidently an attempt to bring out some of the most interesting habits of our American spider fauna by personifying them with the imaginary creatures of fairy lore. You want to know my opinion of the matter? As to the manuscript I shall not, of course, venture an opinion until I have read it