TEACHINGS OF THE SPIDEK. 289 



this shadow of a fancy would be worth the keeping if people 

 would but invest it with the substantiality of a moral such as 

 the "worthy" Fuller thus sets forth. "When a spider," 

 says he, "is found upon our clothes, we used to say 'some 

 money is coming towards us.' The moral is this. Such who 

 imitate the industrie of that contemptible creature, ' which 

 taketh hold with her hands, and is in king's palaces,' may, 

 by God's blessing, weave themselves into wealth and procure 

 a plentiful estate." No bad lesson, this, for the gossipping 

 gadabouts of the divine's own day, whom he elsewhere appro- 

 priately censures as " weavers of streete thread," nor certes 

 less required by their decendants, of our own, the flimsy filan- 

 dieres of gossip-yarn the spinners of webs of scandal, such 

 as entangle and torture, and have often brought death to the 

 reputation of the heedless innocent. 



But while the idle out of mischief may take a lesson of 

 reproof, the wavering or the idle, out of faint-heartedness, 

 may derive one of encouragement from the perseverance of 

 the " money-spinning " family. We have all read how that the 

 royal hero Bruce, when fleeing before his foes a hunted wan- 

 derer, took, as an omen and an oracle, the labours of a spider, 

 making his own decision for a last and final venture de- 

 pendent, with the fate of Scotland, on the success or failure of 

 its seventh effort for attachment of its line. How often has 

 what is called our destiny, be we as individuals great or 

 humble, seemed suspended on a thread as slender, a thread 



