Cra] AXD SYMBOLS. 65 



The Tricks of the Crafty. 



You cannot do business with the crafty bad man with any 

 safety. You may take what you consider guarantees and 

 securities for his appearance at the right time to perform tho 

 agreement that he has made with you, but somehow or other you 

 cannot hold him even in this way. Subtle and deceitful, he 

 contrives to slip away at the moment you thought him secure, 

 lie represents honour and truth as being parts of himself, but 

 somehow or other he is not detained when you want him by 

 the one or the other. He eludes you like the glass snake which, 

 when pursued and touched, will contract the muscles of its 

 tail with such excessive force as to snap off that member, or 

 will even divide itself into two or more pieces, and thus uncatch- 

 able will then glide away from even these parts of itself into 

 some place where its snake-life can recuperate itself in safety. 

 The tricks of this man and the movements of this snake warn 

 us to avoid alike the biped and the reptile. IL. 



The Crafty Rogue. 



i 



To what shall we compare that crafty rogue who, either in 

 the character of a cunning director of bubble companies, or in 

 that of a jobbing promoter of impossible undertakings, or in 

 that of a plausible trickish attorney, gives himself up to the 

 work of entrapping his fellow-men that he may ruin them for 

 his own benefit 1 He is similar to that elegant dragon-fly-like 

 insect, the ant-lion (Myrmeleo formicarins), which is found in 

 the environs of Paris. Its larvae are met with in great 

 abundance in sandy places very much exposed to the heat of 

 the sun. There they construct for themselves a sort of funnel 

 in the sand, by describing backwards the turns of a spiral whose 

 diameter gradually diminishes. Their strong square head serves 

 them as a spade with which to throw the sand far away. They 

 then hide themselves at the bottom of the hole, their head 

 alone being out, and wait with patience for some insect to 

 come near. Scarcely has the ant-lion perceived its victim on 

 the borders of its funnel when it throws at it a shower of dust, 

 to alarm it and make it fall to the bottom of the precipice, 



E 



