CHAPTER XIII 



SNAIL FOLK 



I CLEARED my laboratory table of the most 

 pressing messes, and seeing no immediate squall 

 in prospect out at sea, I started for the Nonsuch 

 tidepools. My artist called to me for criticism of a 

 colored plate of snail drawings. She had just com- 

 pleted the delineation of one of the most beautiful 

 things in the world, but one which, like sunshine 

 and peacocks, has become gesthetically oxidized in 

 our minds through over-familiarity. I suppose if 

 rainbows were never absent from sunsets, and our 

 groves were filled with morpho butterflies, we 

 would begin to appreciate the soft hues of moths and 

 the hundred marvellous greys of clouds. 



I returned to the laboratory and compared the 

 painting with the subject. I found nothing to criti- 

 cize about the first — there was Snail, both in and 

 out of his house, as true as life. Then I looked at 

 the httle creature himself and I forgot about the 

 tidepools. He was in a glass dish, and I transported 

 both snail and myself to a place where the outside 

 world does not dare to bother — my own private 

 Nonsuch den — and my diminutive shellfish and 

 myself looked at each other eye to eye. 



It struck me at once how perfectly silly it would 



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