274 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. 



excellent friend, Mr. Redtape. " Are there not thousands 

 of practical questions less silly and more profitable ? " 

 Even so, my clear-headed, common-sense friend. Go you 

 your way, and let ' me go mine. With you I have no 

 quarrel, and for you I am not writing. Each bead-like 

 eye of this little insignificant spider is a peep-hole through 

 which I would pry into the mystery of life. This it is 

 which renders for me every speck of pulsating living 

 matter, whether it form an atom in the brain of man or 

 exist for its own sake in the stagnant pool, a subject for 

 careful study and reverent meditation. I suppose it's just 

 the way I'm made, and the elements of my nature are 

 compounded ; which, of course is a pity, but somehow 

 can't be helped. Had I been cast in sterner mould, I 

 should be doing something more profitable than writing 

 about " ugly " spiders for certain young friends (if they 

 will allow me so to call them) whom I have never seen, 

 and am never likely to see in this topsy-turvy world, 

 where the good things are so scattered. 



I dare say some of my readers are surprised at my 

 having a good word to say for such a ferocious little 

 monster as a spider. And no doubt, from the moral 

 standpoint of the fly, her conduct is hideously bloodthirsty. 

 But is your own conduct, dear friend, so very different as 

 viewed from the moral standpoint of the lambs which in 

 this spring-time are being born for you to devour ? Not 

 that I am a vegetarian : I accept the world as it stands, 

 being sincerely thankful that, in the great division into 

 those that eat and those that are eaten, I was fortunate 

 enough to be born into the former class ; though I am 

 inclined to doubt whether in the ceaseless struggle for life 

 either class has much advantage over the other. I admit 

 that in the matter of courtship Miss Spider's conduct is a 

 little strange, if not positively reprehensible. To en- 



