A FAMILIAR GUEST 7 



seeds upon the top of the wainscot near by — 

 cherry pits, polygonum, and ragweed, seeds, and 

 others, including some small oak-galls, which I 

 find have been abstracted from a box of speci- 

 mens which I had stored in the closet for safe- 

 keeping. I wonder if it is the same little fellow 

 that built its nest in an old shoe in the same 

 closet last year, and, among other mischief, re- 

 moved the white grub in a similar lot of speci- 

 men galls which I also missed, and subsequently 

 found in the shoe and scattered on the closet 

 floor? 



I have mentioned the murmur of the bees, but 

 the incessant buzzing of flies and wasps is an 

 equally prominent sound. Then there is the oc- 

 casional sortie of the dragon-fly, making his 

 gauzy, skimming circuit about the room, or sug- 

 gestively bobbing around against wall or ceiling; 

 and that occasional audible episode of the stifled, 

 expiring buzz of a fly, which is too plainly in the 

 toils of Arachne up yonder! For in one corner 

 of my room I boast of a prize dusty " cobweb," as 

 yet spared from the household broom, a gossamer 

 arena of two years' standing, which makes a 

 dense span of a length of about two feet from a 

 clump of dried hydrangea blossoms to the sill of 

 a transom - window, and which, of course, some- 



