208 BUTTERFLY PSYCHOLOGY. 



moniously, and in which its day had been 

 so transient ? A mouth ago, a little more 

 or a little less, it had emerged from its 

 silken shroud, dried its splendid party-col- 

 ored wings in the sun, and forthwith had 

 gone sailing away, over the pasture and 

 through the wood, in quest of something, 

 it could hardly have known what. Nobody 

 had welcomed it. When it came, the last 

 of its ancestors were already among the an- 

 cients. Without father or mother, without 

 infancy or childhood, it was born full-grown, 

 and set out, once for all, upon an indepen- 

 dent adult existence. What such a state of 

 uninitiated, uninstructed being may be like 

 let those imagine who can. 



It was born adult, I say ; but at the same 

 time, it was freer from care than the most 

 favored of human children. No one ever 

 gave it a lesson or set it a task. It was 

 never restrained nor reproved ; neither its 

 own conscience nor any outward authority 

 ever imposed the lightest check upon its 

 desires. It had nobody's pleasure to think 

 of but its own ; for as it was born too late 

 to know father or mother, so also it died 

 too soon to see its own offspring. It made 



