The Busy Bee. 193 



recipient to the giver is invariably that of contempt. 

 The benefactor is, in plain language, ' a sucker," first 

 because he squanders his money and gets nothing for it, 

 and second because he works for a living when it is so 

 much easier to tell a pitiful story and perhaps shed a few 

 tears. Even when the person helped is really industrious 

 and worthy (if anybody is worthy to take money he has 

 not earned), there cannot but be hatred of the benefactor. 

 One has had to confess his inferiority, has had to humble 

 himself. You can never again really like the man to 

 whom you are so beholden. 



So I suppose the Apathus feels toward the bumble- 

 bees that give it board and lodging, and, if they are like 

 us, I suppose the bumble-bees feel their hearts swell 

 within them and perhaps a tear of joy dims their com- 

 pound eyes at the thought that they are thus privileged 

 to do an act of kindness to some poor bee that lost its 

 pollen baskets in the Charleston earthquake or the Johns- 

 town flood. " It might happen to me," says the simple- 

 hearted bumble-bee, and goes singing about her work. 

 There's a sucker born every minute," says the Apathus, 

 with a grin. 



The bumble-bee is on the road towards the hive-bee. 

 It has workers that attend on the young, and the leathery 

 bags of thin honey bunched together are not wholly dis- 

 similar to the comb of the hive-bee. But unless it takes to 

 building a nest that will last over from one season to an- 

 other the bumble-bee will probably never amount to any- 

 thing more than the special agent for red clover and an 

 opportunity for little boys to have a fine piratical fight 

 when they find a nest out in the meadow. The bumble- 

 bee is quite a vigorous stinger, as I remember. We used 

 to bat them with shingles, but I have lately been in- 

 formed that the trulv scientific way to rob a bumble-bees' 



