WHIRLIGIGS. 93 



old truth that, be we nimble as we may, Death 

 is quicker still, and shall sometime overtake us. 

 And then, if we have spent our lives snatching 

 good things away from our neighbors, and count- 

 ing all as our enemies, only valuing others for 

 what we can take from them, we shall not be 

 missed or mourned for, though we no longer 

 glitter in the sun. Nature itself teaches the 

 lesson of death ; and Louis XIV., used as he 

 was to adulation, must have despised Bourdaloue 

 who, having cried out in a sermon, " All, all 

 must die ! " seeing the king start, hastened to 

 reassure the royal mind by adding, " Almost all, 

 Sire!" 



Death is the swiftest of all things. Is that the 

 lesson, of the Whirligig, living and dead? Per- 

 haps some observer, more wise than I, can find 

 something in the Gyrinidce that will more profit 

 his " minde " than this lesson of mine. To every 

 one his own perception and the responsibility 

 thereof. Only it does no good to learn a lesson 

 from a book or from nature, unless the learner 

 straightway puts it in practice ; and a warning of 

 an event is of no value unless it leads those 

 warned to make ready for it. 



The pictures of water-beetles perhaps give some 

 people too good an impression. 



"I'm mamma's little water - beetle," said a 

 golden-haired little two-year-old to a friend of 

 mine who had been showing her the pictures of 



