WITH INSECT WINGS 177 



springy legs, and their slow contraction in death, 

 nor the final spread of those half-transparent wings. 

 Was none at hand to rescue the victim, none to 

 avenge the deed? The chill wind passed on, the 

 leaves were still falling, nothing around had changed. 

 But some one had acquired a sad memory as well as 

 a good specimen. A vivid, indelible picture had 

 been painted by that which we, in want of a better 

 name, call conscience, but which is half a per- 

 sonality, half an emotion half fact and half fancy 

 the angel of the heart, who with magic wand 

 flashes unfading pictures where memory, freed from 

 the chains of necessity, will pause for rest in the 

 cooler avenues of thought. And if that pale, tired 

 guest is pained and shocked by those records, it is 

 not strange that she should chide the erring will. 



So the dainty little cricket did not wholly die 

 on that dark day. Her brittle body is crumbling 

 to dust, useless ; her offspring never saw the light ; 

 but in the corner of one poor human mind she yet 

 sits on the old gate beneath the elm, waving her 

 gossamer horns as though watching out the last 

 hour of day. In all that scene the one bright 

 spot soon to be darkened. 

 13 



