4 EYE SPY 
doubtless fain have us understand that he was not 
always thus unable to take care of himself, that 
he was not always the clumsy, crawling creature 
that he now is. As he lies there on his back, the 
yellow, oily globules of surplus " elbow grease " 
swelling larger and larger at his leaky elbows, and 
one by one falling on the paper beneath him, we 
may almost fancy the monologue which might be 
going on in that blue head of his. 
" Yes, I am indeed a clumsy creature," he might 
be saying, as he stares upward into our faces with 
fixed indigo eyes, " and my cumbersome body is 
a burden. But I was not always what you now 
see. Ah, you should have seen me as a baby ! 
Was there ever such a lively, acrobatic, venture- 
some, plucky baby as I, even when I was a day 
old ? Shall I tell you some of my feats ? Every- 
body knows me as I am now ; but I have taken 
care that few shall learn my earlier history. It 
takes a sharp eye to follow my pranks of baby- 
hood, and no one has been smart enough to do it 
yet, but I will at least let you into the secret of 
my life as far as it has been found out. I am 
little over a year old. I was born under a stone 
in a meadow last April, when I crept out of a 
golden-yellow case so small that you could hardly 
see it. I believe your books say I was about a 
sixteenth of an inch long at that time. Ah ! when 
I think of what I was and what I could do then, 
