I Can't Follow My Friend's Wanderings And Adventures As, Springing Out
Of His World Of Books, He Flits And Glides
Like a vagrant, swift-
winged, irresponsible butterfly about the land, sipping the nectar from
a thousand flowers and doing his
Hundred miles in a day and feeling all
the better for it, for this was a man's book, and the wheel and its
magic was never a necessity in man's life. But it has a magic of
another kind for woman, and I wish that some woman of genius would
arise and, inspired perhaps by the ghost of Benjamin Ward Richardson in
his prophetic mood, tell of this magic to her sisters. Tell them, if
they are above labour in the fields or at the wash-tub, that the wheel,
without fatiguing, will give them the deep breath which will purify the
blood, invigorate the heart, stiffen the backbone, harden the muscles;
that the mind will follow and accommodate itself to these physical
changes; finally, that the wheel will be of more account to them than
all the platforms in the land, and clubs of all the pioneers and
colleges, all congresses, titles, honours, votes, and all the books
that have been or ever will be written.
XXXIII
WASPS AND MEN
I now find that I must go back to the subject of my last paper on the
wasp in order to define my precise attitude towards that insect. Then,
too, there was another wasp at table, not in itself a remarkably
interesting incident, but I am anxious to relate it for the following
reason.
If there is one sweetest thought, one most cherished memory in a man's
mind, especially if he be a person of gentle pacific disposition, whose
chief desire is to live in peace and amity with all men, it is the
thought and recollection of a good fight in which he succeeded in
demolishing his adversary. If his fights have been rare adventures and
in most cases have gone against him, so much the more will he rejoice
in that one victory.
It chanced that a wasp flew into the breakfast room of a country house
in which I was a guest, when we were all - about fourteen in number,
mostly ladies, young and middle-aged - seated at the table. The wasp
went his rounds in the usual way, dropping into this or that plate or
dish, feeling foods with his antennae or tasting with his tongue, but
staying nowhere, and as he moved so did the ladies, starting back with
little screams and exclamations of disgust and apprehension. For these
ladies, it hardly need be said, were not cyclists. Then the son of the
house, a young gentleman of twenty-two, a footballer and general
athlete, got up, pushed back his chair and said: "Don't worry, I'll
soon settle his hash."
Then I too rose from my seat, for I had made a vow not to allow a wasp
to be killed unnecessarily in my presence.
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