272 NATURE S CRAFTSMEN 
“ Then, too, we have been pretty much occupied 
with the little craftsmen neighbors that seemed 
to come naturally to hand/’ 
“ I should say so,” chimed Alice, “ and, though 
I want to know about hornets, I would just as 
soon we didn’t attempt any intimacies with them. 
They are much too nervous and irritable to suit 
my fancy.” 
“ Same here,” agreed Max with great prompt¬ 
ness, and everybody smiled, as the lad even then 
had one eye swollen half shut from the effects of 
a bee sting. 
“ The hornets do hold the original patent on 
paper,” Uncle John conceded, as they turned to 
him. “ Authorities all agree that man got his 
first ideas in paper-making from them. Indeed, 
the industry as we know it to-day is only about 
seventy-five or one hundred years old; while these 
little people of the great outdoors have been liv¬ 
ing in paper houses of their own manufacture 
since the beginning of time. Their young have 
been wrapped in the softest of paper blankets 
and nestled in the most perfect paper cradles, 
and, in short, paper of some kind and description 
has answered their every household need. One 
variety of their paper compares very favorably 
with the blotting paper made by man; their 
housebuilding paper is water-proof, and yet an¬ 
other kind has all the properties of cardboard. 
