HERMIT AND TROUBADOUR 141 



read his thoughts we would be none the wiser, since 

 they are only mysterious thoughts about mysterious 

 things. 



. Now it is a surprising fact that we have hermits of 

 similar habits in America ; only our hermits are a little 

 people who dress in white garb and live in cells under- 

 ground ; they also eat little and work not at all and 

 probably meditate upon mysteries. However, they are 

 equipped with six legs, while the monks of Thibet have 

 only two — a difference of little importance, since none 

 of them travel far from their caves. 



In order that you may know the mysterious lives of 

 these American hermits, I will relate to you the history 

 of one of them. 



Seventeen years ago this June, when perhaps the 

 parents of some of the junior naturalists were them- 

 selves school children, a cicada mother made with her 

 ovipositor a little slit or cavity in an elm twig, and in 

 this slit placed in very neat order two rows of eggs. 

 Six weeks later there hatched from one of these eggs 

 a pale, lively, little creature, that to the naked eye 

 looked like a tiny white ant. However, if we could 

 have examined him through a lens, we would have 

 found him very different from an ant ; for his two front 

 legs were shaped somewhat like lobsters' big claws, and 

 instead of jaws like an ant's he simply had a long beak 



