ON THE PROWL . 
/ 
grows frisky, and I give her a canter. There is no more 
exhilarating exercise for the mind, nor any healthier, I 
believe, so long as she does not take the bit in her 
teeth and bolt with you. 
So I imagine my butterfly to myself in its new-born 
glory as a being with little mind and almost devoid of 
thought, but intensely sensitive to a hundred influences 
of nature which are lost on us, just as an ^Eolian harp 
trembles differently to every changing motion of that 
breeze which the City man scarcely notices unless it 
blows his hat off. Through the countless facets of those 
large and shining eyes the splendour of the sun, the 
greenness of the hills, the blue sky, the hues that glance 
from its own bright wings, pour floods of undefined, 
promiscuous joys into the little body ; the fragrance of 
flowers, the stirrings of the air, electric influences perhaps, 
and the arrows of Cupid, all join to thrill its fragile 
frame ; and the consciousness of abounding vitality and 
new and strange powers makes response within it, a 
feeling which is near of kin to pride mingling with its 
joy. So it dances through the day, full of impressions 
and impulses, empty of thought or care. Something 
moving near it casts a shadow on its sight, and it darts 
