Life — August 2, 1888 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

*LIFE- SUMMER STUDIES IN NATURAL HISTORY. THE FLY. I ET us walk together, dear reader, and learn that in stroll- ~ ing through this beautiful world with open eyes we shall see many things that we should not were they closed. Let us bring intelligent methods of observation to bear on the fly. Not the elusive fly which the baseball player vainly ess to keep from gliding through his lubricated fingers, nor yet the fly District Telegraph boy, whom no one has ever seen fly. The fly we mean is just the simple American house-fly. Not so simple, dear reader; no, not so simple as he looks, and the human race has never been able to bunco him into the belief that vinegar was molasses. Nathless, he is simple in his tastes. A little thing like a bald head furnishes him more amusement than a whole Wagner opera. His sense of humor is well developed, and his sides fairly shake with laughter as he glides away into space and looks back at you with two or three thousand of his eyes, while you vainly slap the place where he was—but isn’t. Solomon said, * Go to the ant, thou sluggard.” The fly is away ahead of the ant as a missionary. He does not wait for the sluggard to come to him, but gets up early in the morning, and goes right to work and finds the sluggard in bed. No matter how much trouble the sluggard may have taken the night before to keep him out, the fly is on hand, singing his morning hymn of praise, and prospecting around to find out just what kind of sluggard he has tackled this time. This search for information involves walking around on exposed portions of the sluggard’s cuticle and frequent pauses for consideration. Then the sluggard wakes up, aims carefully, and strikes a desperate blow, only to bruise his own nose or ear, as the case may be, while the happy fly —happy in the consciousness of duty done—fiits off to re- turn anon and renew his labors. Then the sluggard gets up, and all that day, if he needed a fly to bait a fish-hook, he couldn't find one within a mile. How beautiful are thy ways, O Nature! How we rebel at being roused from slumber at unseemly hours! Not so the fly. Come with me, dear reader, into this dark room and light the gas. Do you see the flies calmly sleeping on the ceiling? Note how gladly and cheer- fully they waken and join in our little repast. See the alacrity with which they come down and promenade in our butter, or bathe in our milk. Mark, too, how willingly the humble fly lays down even his life in the great cause of huckleberry pie. Thus, reader mine, by closer observation, we learn that in Nature’s grand plan even the most insig- nificant of things—even a fly !—has its work to do and its place to fill. Metcalfe. NO FURTHER HOPE. LL is over, darling,” he said, in a tone of intense pain, and, leaning his head upon his hands, he writhed in anguish, “I see nothing before me but dark despair; we must part, and forever! I've just come from your father.” “Great heavens, George!” gasped the fainting girl, “did papa withhold his consent?” “Ah, yes; until he has looked me up in Bradstreets’!" 6c COLOSSAL IGNORANCE. ALESWOMAN (fo gentleman, who has picked up a bustle from the counter): Something in that line? ——————d GENTLEMAN: Well, I dunno; do you keep canary birds, too? EY E was not noted particularly for a quarrelsome disposition, yet she raised Cain. AN unsafe seat—Conceit. JUVENILE CRITICISM. EETHOVEN BANGER (w/o labors under the delusion “THE FAIRY TALES OF SCIENCE." ASTRONOMICAL CHART, SHOWING THE COMPARATIVE SIZE OF THE EARTH AND SUN AT DIFFERENT SEASONS, that he ts an artist on the piano): Well, Master Reggie, would you like to be a fine musician ? REGGIE: Yes, first rate; would- n't you? comicbooks.com