FEEDING. 369 



through the meshes. At last they were daring enough to 

 descend the chimney, reeking with sweet odors, even al- 

 though most who attempted it, fell with scorched wings 

 into the fire, and it became necessary to put wire gauze over 

 the top of the chimney also ! 



How often, as I have seen thousands of bees, in such 

 places destroyed, thousands more deprived of all ability to 

 fly, and hopelessly struggling in the deluding sweets, and 

 yet increasing thousands blindly hovering over them, all 

 unmindful of their danger, and apparently eager to share 

 the same destruction, how often has the spectacle of their 

 infatuation, appeared to be an exact picture of the woful 

 delusion of those who surrender themselves to the fatal in- 

 fluences 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, madly trampling as it were, over their dead 

 and dying bodies, that they loo may sink into the same 

 abyss of agonies, and that their sun also may go down in 

 darkness and hopeless gloom. Even although they know 

 that the next cup may send them, with all their sins upon 

 their heads, to the dread tribunal 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 

 so recklessly into the tempting sweets, has ample time to 

 bewail its folly. Even if it has obtained its fill, instead of 

 paying the forfeit of its life, 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 



