222 The Poets and Nature. 



Grateful remembrance leaving on the mind 

 Of still enjoyment in the musing hour 

 Of summer's drowsy noon, and pleasing thought 

 Oft interrupted by his brisk career." 



And that other fly that settles on your face, and when you 

 slap it does not get slapped : 



" Impatient at the foul disgrace 

 From insect of so mean a race ; 

 And, plotting vengeance on his foe, 

 With double fist he aims a blow : 

 The nimble fly escaped by flight ; 

 And skipp'd from this unequal fight. 

 The impending blow with all its weight 

 Fell on his own beloved pate." Somerville. 



The urchin on his way to school stalks the contemplative 

 bluebottle on the sunny wall with all the precautions a Red 

 Indian would spend over a bear ; and, even then, the sudden 

 whisk with which his hand goes all ascrape along the wall, 

 proves as often as not unavailing. Either the fly was washing 

 his face, and did not get up off the bricks soon enough, or 

 else he was watching the urchin, as the wily bear often 

 watches the Redskin, and was off too soon. But, whatever 

 the reason, the fact remains that the bluebottle does not. 



Moreover, in flying away, it startles all the other flies for 

 yards around, and the happy hunting grounds which the 

 shiny-faced youth had found are suddenly desolated by his 

 single misadventure, just as a prairie is emptied of its bison 

 by the mischance of a rifle going off by accident. 



When grown up, the same boy continues to catch flies, or 

 tries to. He buys gummy compositions, which he smears 

 upon paper, with the expectation that the insects will sit 

 upon it and become entangled on the viscous surface and 

 expire there. But he is doomed to disappointment wholesale, 

 for the flies come and make prodigious meals off the gummy 

 composition, and when they have done they walk round the 

 edge of the plate with toothpicks in their mouths, as proud 



