HOW LUCY LOVED INSECTS. 



orders, families,, and species, believed himself, from the acqui- 

 sition of these scanty chips, to have become a deacon in ento- 

 mologic craft. 



To the little Lucy the painting of the science, or the paint- 

 ing of its objects as displayed in the beautiful moths and 

 butterflies and beetles of her father's cabinet, or the splendid 

 plates of his illustrated works, was, of course, its most inviting 

 feature, excepting, perhaps, its poetry, eagerly drunk in by her 

 childish spirit, as it responded in innocent delight to the mur- 

 mur of insect voices, followed gaily their painted or their 

 iridescent wings from flower to flower, or rose suspended in 

 joyous ecstasy with tin- Mny-lly of the morning. Then, as to 

 Dolly Dove, nurse, housekeeper, nay cook besides, as she 

 sometimes was, it was in a modified form of the same spirit, 

 picture-loving and poetic, that she had followed with a flight 

 much bolder than his own, the leading of the family's head in 



^ O / 



the lk>\\ uy field of entomology. Scarcely less delightedly than 

 Lucy, had she often admired, through her spectacles, the gems 

 of my uncle's cabinet, or, walking out with us in the pleasant 

 meadows, noticed the winged revellers at their summer sports. 

 l>ut it was chiefly as objects of her simple superstition that 

 certain insects held in the estimation of Dolly an adventitious 

 lank, raised, instead of lowered, since the remote commence- 

 ment of her service in the minister's family. She was accus- 

 tomed to regard her master under a twofold aspect of devoted 

 affection and profound respect. As the man whose childhood 



