On the Threshold of the Hive 
groups, somewhat resembling roasted coffee- 
berries or bunches of raisins piled against 
the glass. They look more dead than alive; 
their movements are slow, incoherent, and 
incomprehensible. Can these be the won- 
derful drops of light he had seen but a 
moment ago, unceasingly flashing and spark- 
ling, as they darted among the pearls and 
the gold of a thousand wide-open calyces? 
They appear to be shivering in the dark- 
ness, to be numbed, suffocated, so closely 
are they huddled together; one might fancy 
they were ailing captives, or queens de- 
throned, who have had their one moment 
of glory in the midst of their radiant garden, 
and are now compelled to return to the 
shameful squalor of their poor overcrowded 
home. 
It is with them as with all that is deeply 
real; they must be studied, and one must 
learn how to study them. The inhabitant 
of another planet who should see men and 
women coming and going almost imper- 
ceptibly through our streets, crowding at 
certain times round certain buildings, or 
waiting for one knows not what without 
23 
