Yet this habit of killing a wasp is so
common, ingrained as it were, as to be almost universal among us, and
is found in the gentlest and humanest person, and even the most
spiritual-minded men come to regard it as a sort of religious duty and
exercise, as the incident I am going to relate will show.
I came to Salisbury one day to find it full of visitors, but I
succeeded in getting a room in one of the small family hotels. I was
told by the landlord that a congress was being held, got up by the
Society for the pursuit or propagation of Holiness, and that delegates,
mostly evangelical clergymen and ministers of the gospel of all
denominations, with many lay brothers, had come in from all over the
kingdom and were holding meetings every day and all day long at one of
the large halls. The three bedrooms on the same floor with mine, he
said, were all occupied by delegates who had travelled from the extreme
north of England.
In the evening I met these three gentlemen and heard all about their
society and congress and its aim and work from them.
Next morning at about half-past six I was roused from sleep by a
tremendous commotion in the room adjoining mine: cries and shouts,
hurried trampings over the floor, blows on walls and windows and the
crash of overthrown furniture. However, before I could shake my sleep
off and get up to find out the cause, there were shouts of laughter, a
proof that no one had been killed or seriously injured, and I went to
sleep again.
At breakfast we met once more, and I was asked if I had been much
disturbed by the early morning noise and excitement. They proceeded to
explain that a wasp had got into the room of their friend - indicating
the elderly gentleman who had taken the head of the table; and as he
was an invalid and afraid of being stung, he had shouted to them to
come to his aid. They had tumbled out of bed and rushed in, and before
beginning operations had made him cover his face and head with the
bedclothes, after which they started hunting the wasp. But he was too
clever for them. They threw things at him and struck at him with their
garments, pillows, slippers, whatever came to hand, and still he
escaped, and in rushing round in their excitement everything in the
room except the bedstead was overthrown. At last the wasp, tired out or
terrified dropped to the floor, and they were on him like a shot and
smashed him with the slippers they had in their hands.
"And you call yourselves religious men!" I remarked when they had
finished their story and looked at me expecting me to say something.
They stared astonished at me, then exchanged glances and burst out
laughing, and laughed as if they had heard something too excruciatingly
funny. The elderly clergyman who had been saved from the winged man-
eating dragon that had invaded his room managed at last to recover his
gravity, and his friends followed suit; they then all three silently
looked at me again as if they expected to hear something more.
Not to disappoint them, I started telling them about the life and work
of a famous nobleman, one of England's great pro-consuls, who for many
years had ruled over various countries in distant regions of the earth,
and many barbarous and semi-savage nations, by whom he was regarded,
for his wisdom and justice and sympathy with the people he governed,
almost as a god. This great man, who was now living in retirement at
home, had just founded a Society for the Protection of Wasps, and had
so far admitted two of his friends who were in sympathy with his
objects to membership. As soon as I heard of the society I had sent in
an application to be admitted, too, and felt it would be a proud day
for me if the founder considered me worthy of being the fourth member.
Having concluded my remarks, the three religious gentlemen, who had
listened attentively and seriously to my praises of the great pro-
consul, once more exchanged glances and again burst out laughing, and
continued laughing, rocking in their chairs with laughter, until they
could laugh no more for exhaustion, and the elderly gentleman removed
his spectacles to wipe the tears from his eyes.
Such extravagant mirth surprised me in that grey-haired man who was
manifestly in very bad health, yet had travelled over three hundred
miles from his remote Cumberland parish to give the benefit of his
burning thoughts to his fellow-seekers after holiness congregated at
Salisbury from all parts of the country.
The gust of merriment having blown its fill, ending quite naturally in
"minute drops from off the eaves," I gravely wished them good-bye and
left the room. They did not know, they never suspected that the
amusement had been on both sides, and that despite their laughter it
had been ten times greater on mine than on theirs.
I can't in conclusion resist the temptation to tell just one more wasp
incident, although I fear it will hurt the tender-hearted and religious
reader's susceptibilities more than any of those I have already told.
But it will be told briefly, without digression and moralisings.
We have come to regard Nature as a sort of providence who is mindful of
us and recompenses us according to what our lives are - whether we
worship her and observe her ordinances or find our pleasure in breaking
them and mocking her who will not be mocked.
