52 APRIL. 



as deeply as if my livelihood depended upon it. My 

 shop was often filled with loungers who came to con- 

 verse upon public measures, and now and then I went 

 into my neighbour's houses upon a similar errand. 

 This encroached on my time, and I found it necessary 

 sometimes to work until midnight to make up for the 

 hours I had lost. 



" One night, after my shutters were closed, and I 

 was busily employed, some little urchin, who was 

 passing the street, put his mouth to the keyhole of the 

 door, and with a shrill pipe cried out, * Shoemaker ! 

 Shoemaker ! work by night and run about by day !' 

 Had a pistol been fired off at my ear I could not have 

 been more dismayed or confounded ; I dropped my 

 work, saying to myself, ' True, true ! but you shall 

 never have that to say of me again !' I have never 

 forgotten it; and, while I recollect anything I never 

 shall. To me it was the voice of God, and it has been 

 a word in season throughout my life. I learned from 

 it not to leave till to-morrow the work of to-day, or to 

 idle when I ought to be working. From that time I 

 turned over a new leaf. 



" Thanks, a thousand times thanks, for that piece of 

 midnight mischief!" 



Now the working man in his prosecution of the 

 science of Entomology need not, ought not, to neglect 

 his business for it, but if he takes up its study he ought 

 to prosecute it vigorously (not by fits and starts), de- 

 termining to know all he can respecting the objects of 

 his study, and not rest satisfied with being a mere 

 collector of species, but aim. at becoming a naturalist, 

 not in name only but in deed ; and this is quite within 



