THE PAPER WASP AND HIS DOINGS 93 



asked to move ; for what good is it tew murder 

 99 hornets an' have the one hundred one hit you 

 with his javeHn ! I kan't tell you just tew a day 

 how long a hornet kan live, but I kno from expe- 

 rience that every bug, be he hornet or somebody 

 else who is mad all the time, an' stings every 

 chance he kan git, generally outlives all ov his 

 nabors." 



An artistically constructed paragraph, with a 

 "snapper" at the end of it, or rather a "sharp 

 konklusion " quite consistent with its subject. 



" Mad all the time," he says, and " stings every 

 chance he can git," and such would seem to be 

 the unanimous belief. Indeed, the phrase " As 

 mad as a hornet " has passed into a proverb, which 

 presumably dates back to the Aryans, or at least 

 from the scriptural allusion of the providential 

 visitation of hornets, which routed the impious in- 

 habitants of Canaan before the conquering Israel- 

 ites. The ancient Greeks and Latins are on rec- 

 ord in their appreciation of the " warlike hornet," 

 and considered that it came rightly by its valor 

 as an inheritance from the dead war-horse from 

 whose carcass the insects were supposed to be 

 spontaneously generated. 



" The warlike horse if buried underground 

 Shortly a brood of hornets will be found," 



writes Ovid. Another author, Cardanus, thought 



