THE TALKING FLY 



September i^th 



OT once but a half-dozen times has this com- 

 ical-looking fly made game of me in my 

 walks. It needs only a single glance at the 

 specimen to see that something out of the 

 ordinary run of things might be expected 

 from him. The first time he experimented 

 on me I well remember. I was sitting beneath a hazel- 

 bush in the shadow of a stone-wall, examining some flow- 

 ers which I had just gathered. For a matter of five min- 

 utes while thus employed I was carelessly conscious of 

 voices somewhere in the remote neighborhood on the 

 other side of the wall. The tone suggested a masculine 

 source, and at one moment seemed to take the form of 

 a soliloquy, and then of an interrupted dialogue, now 

 suggesting a long-drawn nasal exclamation which pict- 

 ured to my mind a Coriolanus in the far distance "driv- 

 ing his oxen by sheer force of his lungs," " Ha-a-aw-w-w !" 

 with a falling inflection, and again a yell across the 



