340 THE BEE KEEPEK'S MANUAL. 



How often, as 1 have seen thousands of bees, in stich 

 places destroyed, and thousands more deprived of all ability 

 to fly, and hopelessly struggling in the deluding sweets, and 

 yet thousands more blindly hovering over them, all unmind- 

 ful of their danger, and apparently eager to share the same 

 destruction, how often has the spectacle of their infatuation 

 seemed to me, to be an exact picture of the woful delusion 

 of those who surrender themselves to the fatal influences of 

 the intoxicating cup. Even although they see the miserable 

 victims of this degrading vice, falling all around them, into 

 premature and dishonored graves, they still press on, raadly 

 trampling as it were, over their dead and dying bodies, that 

 they too may sink into the same abyss of agonies, and that 

 their sun may also go down in darkness and hopeless gloom. 

 Even although they know that the next eup may send them., 

 with all their sins upon their heads, to the dread triibunal of 

 their God, that cup of bitter sorrows and untold degradation, 

 they will drain even to its most loathsome dregs. 



The avaricious bee that despised the slow process of ex- 

 tracting nectar from " every opening flower," and plunged 

 recklessly into the tempting sweets, has ample time to 

 bewail its folly. Even if it has not paid the forfeit of its 

 life, but has been able to obtain its fill, it returns home 

 with all its beautiful plumage sullied and besmeared, and 

 with a woe-begone look, and sorrowful note, in marked 

 contrast with the bright hues and merry sounds with which 

 the industrious bee returns from its happy rovings amid 

 "the budding honey flowers, and sweetly breathing fields." 



Just so, has many a pilgrim from the golden shores of 

 California and Australia, returned ; enfeebled in body and 

 mind, bankrupt often in character and happiness, if not in 

 purse, and unfitted in every way, for the calm and sober 

 pursuits of common industry j while thousands, yes, an4 



