The Last Word. 213 



cicada, and when an artist makes a picture of a cicada to 

 illustrate La Fontaine's Fables he draws a grasshopper. 

 So you see, it is a kind of pussy-wants-a-corner nomen- 

 clature, but you will know what I mean when I say that 

 the locust is the creature that when we were little boys 

 we were always going to hitch up with thread to a paper 

 wagon, but never could quite manage it. I don't know 

 why it is that it is the ambition of every little boy to have 

 such a team, when he knows that they will kick over the 

 traces in a manner to shame the wildest colt, unless it is 

 that the locust's head looks something like that of a 

 horse with blinkers on. Do you remember how we used 

 to make them spit tobacco juice? It was the locust first 

 taught me that insects' jaws work sidewise. It is a 

 primitive insect, much akin to cockroaches, and, like 

 them, having practically no metamorphoses. 



I was going to say something too about what a plague 

 these locusts or 'hoppers were in the early seventies to 

 the States just west of the Mississippi. They fairly 

 skinned the earth of every green thing. Farmers w^ent 

 mad in droves, driven insane by the horrid noise and the 

 impending ruin it foreboded. The governors of Minne- 

 sota, Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri 

 met at Omaha to talk the matter over. Strange to say, 

 that did no good, though they were most able politicians. 

 However, it was decided there to name April 26, 1877, 

 as a day of public humiliation and prayer, that the 

 Maker of locusts and of men would discriminate against 

 the locusts and in favor of the men. 



It was unusually warm weather when April 26 drew 

 near, and the 'hoppers hatched early and started out for a 

 vigorous campaign, when lo and behold you! a terrible 

 cold wave came and killed them off so thoroughly that 

 there have been hardly any to speak of since. The folks 



