SEES, WASPS, ETC. 83 



successful gossip, will find much exercise for it in ferreting 

 out the most sacred secrets of the inner domestic life of 

 those waspy families ./hie/: colonize his house at this 

 season of the year. He may peer through their keyholes, 

 so to speak, and read their private letters, and gratify the 

 spirit of meanness to the full, without reaping self-debase- 

 ment as his reward. On the contrary, he will learn many 

 things which will exercise his best sympathies and call 

 forth humane emotions. For in these families there is 

 often disaster and sore bereavement. The home papers 

 often have some sad story to make public of a romantic 

 son who has left the parental roof, and is supposed to have 

 started, with a secondhand revolver, for the prairies of 

 America, or of a daughter, who went shopping, and has 

 never been heard of since ; and, if it is doubtful whether 

 fairies and elves really do take away fat babies and leave 

 starved changelings in their place, it is quite certain that 

 gipsies do worse, for they steal a child and leave no com- 

 pensation ; but what are all these to the lot of the un- 

 suspecting little architect, which falls a victim to the designs 

 of the idle ichneumon fly ? As she builds her little cottage 

 of clay, the sinister eye of the ruffian is watching her 

 operations, and when the place is finished and provisioned, 



