STING STRUCTURE. 



197 



in a rock, the avenues are wide which would give 

 entrance to the robber. Even with the narrow door- 

 way of a hive, bees are sometimes sorely worried in 

 the fall by the persistent attacks of hungry wasps, 

 that would overmaster any number of brave defenders, 

 were the latter deprived of their poisoned darts. 

 Man, by observation, and a knowledge of the habits 

 of the insect, can nearly always successfully prevent 

 or evade her attack ; for it is too much to expect her 

 to concede that the master robs by right divine, or to 

 understand that he but levies a righteous tax upon the 

 prosperity he brings by the refinements of civilization 

 and the wisdom of his government — a failure in which 

 she has been followed by some higher in the scale 

 of creation than herself. There is, besides, a charm 

 in overcoming difficulties. Man was born to conquer; 

 he was placed in the world to "subdue it"; and so 

 the zest of successfully marshalling, at our will, a 

 throng that could, if they knew their power, drive 

 us writhing from their neighbourhood, is far greater 

 (even though the profit might be less) than could 

 come, in the absence of the sting, from the man- 

 agement of — 



" A golden hive, on a golden bank, 

 Where golden bees, by alchemical prank, 

 Gather gold instead of honey." 



Man and bees alike live in a world where good and 

 evil grow together, where the thrift of the industrious 

 excites the cupidity of the idle, where meum and 

 tuum are regarded sometimes as convertible. Let us, 

 then, accepting the sting without regret, strive to learn 

 the way in which, for us, it shall cease to be an evil. 



