8 The Book of Bugs. 



vivid interest to the men that write them as my account 

 of my partiality for coffee is to me, to the rest of us they 

 are about as tiresome as your story about your always 

 drinking tea for breakfast. There was hope for a while 

 that we might get into communication with Mars, and 

 thus have something to talk about after we had done 

 with the weather, but that hope wilted 'when Mr. T'esla 

 declared it to be a perfectly feasible undertaking, so we 

 have turned to the creatures about us that we so modestly 

 call 'the lower animals." 



Our acquaintance with these has progressed according 

 to rifie, frorrn the center of the world outwardly. I sup- 

 pose not having been present, except potentially that 

 Primitive Man was interested first in those creatures that 

 were good to eat. After that, I should think, he noticed 

 the first animal, if not the only animal, that took Man at 

 his own valuation, that came to him and said : " Resistance 

 is useless against so resourceful an antagonist. Say, do 

 you know, you are smarter than any of them ? Let's 

 you and me go into cahoots. Have you any cold meat 

 about the house? Yes, sir, I was just saying this morn- 

 ing that there was no getting away from it, you were 

 undoubtedly the smartest of the lot. Oh, anything will 

 do, a bone or what scraps you happen to have." 



I mean the dog. The cat's case was different. Notice 

 how we naturally call a dog " he " and a cat " she." The 

 dog is man's vassal ; the cat is woman's client. The dog 

 was overawed by man's prowess in the chase, and by 

 associating with man became man's slave and lost his 

 self-respect in his admiration for his master. If man 

 caught, woman kept, and storehouses are famous mous- 

 ing-groimds. It was woman coaxed the cat to leave the 

 wi'ld life and come live in a house and kill the mice. The 

 cat thought it over and finally accepted the invitation, with 



