90 OUR HOBBY IN THE HOUSE. 



to create a feeling which borders on attachment for even 

 an inanimate object. Is it strange, then, that from the like 

 causes the like result should follow with a creature endowed 

 with consciousness, and possessed of senses resembling our 

 own ? 



We know, indeed, that flowers are (as they should be) 

 universally loved, while insects (the creatures of all others most 

 nearly allied to them) are, as they should not be, almost 

 universally disliked. But in proof that the latter prejudice 

 may be overcome not by argument, nor yet by ridicule but 

 by the seeing of the eye, we must be allowed to quote our old 

 domestic, in whom it was the 'growth of seventy years, and 

 deep-rooted in the weedy soil of ignorance. Like all persons 

 of her class and many of a higher, she held the orders of 

 beetle and caterpillar in especial abhorrence; and when we 

 first began to keep " our hobby ' in the house, Martha was 

 almost as highly disconcerted as if we had brought home a 

 iH-w housekeeper. It was bad enough to see the flower-pots 

 in our window-seat displaced for gauze-covered boxes, with 

 the half-veiled horrors they contained. It was too bad to 

 behold us returning from our daily walk hands laden with 

 littering boughs and ugly weeds pockets with pill-boxes, each 

 with a living pill how hard for her to swallow ! in the con- 

 viction that some or all were to become new inmates of the 

 parlour. It was worst of all for us to come home (as in 

 spring-time not rarely happened) with mud-covered shoes 



