216 OUT OF DOORS. 



of occupation, and that to be condemned to utter idle- 

 ness would be the most terrible punishment that could 

 be inflicted upon a human being. Why, even the poor 

 fashionable idler really works, in his way, as hard as 

 any of us, because getting amusement is much more 

 laborious than getting a living, becomes more difficult 

 every day, and leaves nothing but disappointment be- 

 hind it. Idle people are fond of talking as if they had 

 exhausted the world, and found it to be hollow and 

 empty — like that poor silly man, of whom we read the 

 other day in the papers, who shot himself because he 

 had been all over this world and thought it was time 

 for him to try another. Why, there is a sliver of a 

 cedar-pencil lying on my paper, and I will answer for 

 it that any ' used up ' personage who thinks that he 

 has exhausted the world and will just try to find out all 

 about that little slip of juniper wood will find life too 

 short for the task. 



Look, for example, at the amount of work which is 

 achieved within this chrysalis lying before us, and just 

 think of the millions upon milHons of similar beings at 

 this moment undergoing as complete a transformation, 

 from a terrestrial to an aerial state of existence ; their 

 form, constitution, organisation, wants, and habits so 

 totally changed that the one is wholly unrecognisable 

 from the other. Even to go back for a moment to our old 

 friend, the frog, what a wonderful law it is which takes 

 possession of the no-limbed, long-tailed, gill-breathing 



