O' TOBKK, 1922 



G L K A N I N G S IN BEE C IT li T U R lO 



641 



111 the meantime strange things had been 

 going on. When he caught hold of the first 

 bee, Mr. Middlerib, for reasons, drew it out 

 in such haste tliat for a time he forgot all 

 about the bottle and its remedial contents, 

 and left it lying uncorked in the bed, be 

 tween himself and his innocent wife. In 

 the darkness there had been a quiet but gen- 

 eral emigration from the bottle. The bees, 

 their wings clogged with the water Mr. 

 Middlerib had poured upon them to cool and 

 tninquilize them, were crawling aimlessly 

 about over the sheet. While Mr. Middlerib 

 was feeling around • for it, his ears were 

 suddenly thrilled and his heart frozen by a 

 wild, piercing scream from his wife. 



"Murder!" she screamed. "Murder! Oh! 

 Help me! Help! Help!" 



Mr. Middlerib sat bolt upright in bed. 

 His hair stood on end. The night was warm, 

 but he turned to ice in a minute. 



tlie sole of Mrs. Middlerib 's foot, slie 

 slirieked that the house was bewitched, and 

 immediately went into spasms. 



The household was aroused by this time. 

 Miss. Middlerib and Master Middlerib and 

 the servants were pouring into the room, 

 adding to the general confusion by howling 

 at random and asking irrelevant questions, 

 while they gazed at the figure of a man a 

 little on in years, arrayed in a long night- 

 shirt, pawing fiercely at the unattainable 

 spot in the middle of his back, while he 

 danced an unnatural, weird, wicked-looking 

 jig by the dim religious light of the niglit- 

 lamp. And while he danced and howled, 

 and while they gazed and shouted, a navy- 

 blue wasp that Master Middlerib had put in 

 the bottle for good measure and vnriety, 

 and to keep the menagerie stirred up, had 

 dried his legs and wings with a corner of 

 the sheet, and, after a preliminary circle or 



"Where in tliunder, " he said, with pallid 

 lips, as he felt aH over the bed in frenzied 

 haste, "where in thunder are them infer- 

 nal bees?" 



And a large "bumble," with a sting as 

 pitiless as the finger of scorn, just then 

 climbed up the inside of Mr. Middlerib 's 

 nightshirt, until it got squarely between his 

 shoulders, and then it felt for his marrow, 

 and said calmly: "Here is one of them." 



And Mrs. Middlerib felt ashamed of her 

 feeble screams when Mr. Middlerib threw 

 up both arms, and, with a howl that made 

 the windows rattle, roared: "Take him off! 

 Oh, land of Scott, somebody take him off! " 



And when a little honeybee began tickling 



two around the bed to get up his motion 

 and settle down to a working gait,' he fired 

 himself across the room, and to his dying 

 day Mr. Middlerib will always believe that 

 one of the servants mistook him for a bur- 

 glar and shot him. 



No one, not even Mr. Middlerib himself, 

 could doubt that he was, at least for the 

 time, most thoroughly cured of rheumatism. 

 His own boy could not have carried himself 

 more lightly or with greater agility. But 

 the cure was not permanent, and Mr. Mid- 

 dlerib does not like to talk about it. 



[An article by Eobcrt Jones Burdette 

 (1844 — ) in the New York Weekly, not now 

 existing.] 



