THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE 

 KITCHEN. 



IF the test of nobility is antiquity of family, then the 

 cockroach that hides behind the kitchen sink is the true 

 aristocrat. He does not date back merely to the three 

 brothers that came over in 1640 or to William the Con- 

 queror. Wherever there have been great epoch-making 

 movements of people he has been with them heart and 

 soul, without possessing any particular religious convic- 

 tions or political ambitions. It is not so much that he 

 approves of their motives as that he likes what they have 

 to eat. Since ever a ship turned a foamy furrow in the 

 sea he has been a passenger, not a paying one certainly, 

 but still a passenger. But man himself is but a creature 

 of the last twenty minutes or so compared with the cock- 

 roach, for, from its crevice by the kitchen sink, it can 

 point its antennae to the coal in the hod and say: " When 

 that was being made my family was already w r ell estab- 

 lished." There is good reason to believe that the cock- 

 roach is the oldest of air-breathing animals. From the 

 rocks we do not know half a dozen insects of other kinds, 

 but the cockroach is visible on every geologic horizon. 



It has seen the most promising organisms enter the 

 world's history, flourish mightily for a time, and with as 

 firm a conviction as any newspaper in a boom town that 

 they had " come to stay," and then pass away after hav- 

 ing tried all manner of variations in the effort to accom- 

 modate themselves to circumstances. They couldn't 

 seem to make it pay, but the cockroach has got along all 



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