Flies: " The Hosts of Achorr 223 



as old gentlemen in white waiscoats who have just dined at 

 a grand restaurant. 



Some of them eat too much, but they are not so mean- 

 spirited as to show it, or to advertise the stuff that kills them ; 

 for they creep away into remote places tobacco-jars, jam- 

 pots, tea-caddies, the family Bible, anywhere and turn 

 over flat on their back, and fold all their six legs across 

 their breasts, and die with the most decent composure 

 possible. 



There is no triumph to be scored off such decease. The 

 small things confided in man, and got poisoned for doing so. 

 They thought, as it was intended they should, that the sticky 

 papers were laid out for their refreshment, and partook of 

 the cold collation with that artless trustfulness which, after 

 all, is one of the most agreeable features of the wild world. 

 But the adhesive stuff, neither liquid nor solid an 

 amphibious sort of mixture, so to speak had been laid on 

 guilefully, '' and the same with intent to deceive," and the 

 flies therefore were as deliberately betrayed to their death as 

 those guests of Jung Bahadur's who were invited to supper, 

 but beheaded before they had time to begin. As a specimen 

 of hospitality, the treacled plate is execrable ; as a practical 

 joke, it is in the worst possible taste. 



Thus far, then, the association of flies with human beings 

 which in the poets is so characteristically prominent but in 

 nature rather accidental, casual, and secondary. Far more 

 important in nature is the association between the fly and 

 spider. Each is the complement of the other ; each the 

 corollary to the other's proposition. From spider you 

 deduce fly ; it is arguing from the known to the known. The 

 one is as implicit in the other as bride in bridegroom. You 

 cannot imagine flies without spiders any more than you can 

 imagine matter without form. They go together like sub- 

 stance and shadow. The idea of either alone is an absurdity, 

 a negative quantity. Subtract flies from spiders and what 



