TEACHINGS OF THE SPIDER. 289 



this shadow of a fancy would be worth the keeping if people 

 would but invest it with the substantiality of a moral such as 

 the " worthy ' Fuller thus sets forth. " When a spider," 

 says he, " is found upon our clothes, we use to say ' some 

 money is coming towards us/ The moral is this. Such who 

 imitate the Industrie of that contemptible creature, ' which 

 taketh hold with her hands, and is in king's palaces/ may, 

 by God's blessing, weave themselves into wealth and pro- 

 cure a plentiful estate." No bad lesson, this, for the gos- 

 sipping gadabouts of the divine's own day, whom he else- 

 where appropriately censures as " weavers of streete thread," 

 nor certes less required by their descendants, of our own, the 

 flimsy Jilandieres of gossip-yarn the spinners of webs of scan- 

 dal, such as entangle and torture, and have often brought death 

 to the reputation of the heedless innocent. 



But while the idle out of mischief may take a lesson of 

 reproof, the wavering or the idle, out of faint-heartedness, 

 may derive one of encouragement from the perseverance of 

 the " money- spinning" family. We have all read how that the 

 royal hero Bruce, when fleeing before his foes a hunted wan- 

 derer, took, as an omen and an oracle, the labours of a spider, 

 making his own decision for a last and final venture de- 



o 



pendent, with the fate of Scotland, on the success or failure of 

 its seventh effort for attachment of its line. How often has 

 what is called our destiny, be we as individuals great or 

 humble, seemed suspended on a thread as slender, a thread 



