Foes of Clothes and Carpets. 123 



ever, still it was a patent fact that no gas to speak of got 

 into them. The gas people ran rotary brushes through 

 the pipe and hitched team after team to the rope, and 

 many a telegraph pole to which block and tackle had 

 been fastened did they pull up by the roots. There isn't 

 any of this stuff left in the mains now, for the water-gas 

 is eagerly looking for something of the kind with which 

 to enrich its flame, and is blue for the lack of it. Naph- 

 thalin would help the gaslight out greatly, but of all the 

 many properties this chemical possesses the one that 

 concerns us most now is that it has such a bad smell that 

 it is supposed to spoil the moth's appetite for our winter 

 clothing. To this tiny fluttering thing, scarce half an 

 inch from tip to tip of its extended grayish-yellow wings, 

 indistinctly tawny-spotted, we begrudge the little bite it 

 eats and, though women are most merciful, among them 

 there is not one to play the part of Uncle Toby and to 

 declare that there is room enough in the world for both 

 her and the moth, especially if she have just opened out 

 her best pair of blankets and noted the ragged holes 

 gnawed in them, or stripped the mangy hair off by hand- 

 fuls from her " real " sables. 



We say, ' The moth has eaten them," but moths never 

 eat anything. What a nice tender bit of blanket tastes 

 like, or a sirloin cut out of an evening coat, they haven't 

 an idea, unless their memory lasts over the great change 

 that takes place when they cease to be ever-hungry chil- 

 dren and become adults and proper subjects for the 

 grand passion. Not even can they flit from flower to 

 flower and sip the fragrant nectar. The reason is very 

 brief: They have no mouths. The story of how this 

 came to be is very long, ages long. Evidently from 

 the fact that there are still rudiments of the mouth, 

 once on a time the grown-up Tinea pellionella did eat, 



