extracting about one-half of the Greek, Latin, and French quotations and phrases, unsuited to the present prevailing taste, with which it was interlarded-like the lemon, cloves and raisins generously sprinkled through Christmas pie-I faithfully impart the manuscript as I received it from the author.

have heard my piteous voice uplifted in the notes of unlimited terror, yet my mother, whose name rose loudest upon my tongue, did not come to my relief, until I had been allowed, for full five minutes, to ring a gammut upon her monosyllabic maternal appellation, with every possible variation familiar to infant lungs. At length she entered at the top of her speed, and with her voice pitched to a scolding key, when she espied my condition and the extent of my misfortunes. Her tongue then struck up a treble to my tenor, and snatch

round until she got in front of me, and then made a desperate charge against the rear of our mutual foe, who had thus taken me in the van, and with her whole force thrust the end of the broom bodily into my face and eyes, laying me at the same time flat on my back, while she followed up her success by standing over me and imprisoning the enemy, by pressing the broom

weapon assailed the bee on the tergum, he sounded a sharp note of alarm, and inserting his aculeus, or sting, into my unoffending nose, therein instilled a sufficient modicum of poison; and then deliberately depressing the barbs of his sting, he drew it forth and secreted himself among the straws of the broom, (for my mother, good woman, by holding it stoutly against my

late the monster, gave him ample time for this,) from which, when she finally removed it, he effected his escape, by darting through the door, with a quick trumpet-like sound, no doubt a paan in honor of his victory. What with the broom and the sting, one of which pricked and nearly suffocated me, while the other penetrated to the quick, I now began to yell to a pitch, in comparison with which, my previous roaring forsooth, was but the wailing of a new-born infant. I rolled over the floor with my nose in my fist, and would not be comforted. But I will not dwell upon this early reminiscence: it is but the first of a series of misfortunes,-the memorabilia of my life,—such as few men have lived to experience.

"I am an unfortunate victim of Entomology: not of the science, but of every species of insect of which the science treateth; more especially the bee, wasp, and hornet, and all and singular of the irritabile genus, being up a broom, she advanced it like a pike, edging sides the horn-bug, gad-fly, dragon-fly, and each and every of those loud-humming insects that buzz about at night-yea, verily the whole tribe of evropa, or insects, are my aversion, from which I stand in bodily terror, the comparatively harmless house, or domestic fly, herein not even excepted. My life has been a period of discomfort and torture on account thereof more especially in the seasons when Sirius or the Dog-firmly down on my face. As the spicule of this female star rageth. This Poßnua, or fear, I sucked in with my mother's milk, herself an insect-fearing woman, who stepped into a nest of wasps two months before my birth, the whole ireful population of which pursued her half a mile,-whereby, on my being brought into the world, the mark of a wasp of vast dimensions, truncus, thorax, proboscis and sternum, not to forget ala and pedes, was plainly visible to the eyes of the admiring mid-face, twisting and working it, in the attempt to immowife and her cronies, in the small of my back: hinc illæ lachrymæ ! This fear, therefore, is maternal, originating in the ros vitalis, as Virgil expresseth it; and therefore being natural, cannot be combatted with effectually, and overcome. The first time of which my memory is authentic, that I gave symptoms of possessing this hereditary horror of winged and stinging insects, a horror which has drugged with bitterness the cup of my sublunary existence, was at the tender age of three years, I being then a stout, well-grown boy to be in petticoats, as I remember that I was. I was sitting in the back-door sunning myself, for it was summer, and quietly sucking a lump of molasses candy, when I heard all at once a fierce buzzing in the vicinage of my left ear; whereupon, without knowing or understanding its cause, I instinctively shut my eyes, and opening my mouth, sent forth a loud cry. The buzzing continued to grow louder and approach nearer, and my cries increased proportionably. At length the object of my terror and the instigator of my cries, in the shape of a formidable honey-bec, ubi mel, ibi apes, saith M. Plautus, which is no doubt equally true of molasses, lit upon the tip of my nose, lavishly besmeared with the candy, which I had been diligently conveying to my mouth. Clinging there, he balanced himself with his wings, and staring me in the face with his great glaring eyes, for my infant fears marvellously magnified his oculi, he proceeded with the greatest sang froid, as the French tongue happily expresseth it, briskly to convey with his proboscis the candy from my nose to his stomach--brandishing his antennæ, or horns, all the while to and fro before my eyes, in a manner dreadful to witness, to hold me as it were in terrorem. I was paralyzed with fear, and lost the command of every bodily member, save my tongue-which, for the time, I may truthfully asseverate, did duty for all the rest. There chanced to be no soul in the house at this crisis; and although any one, even half a mile distant, could

Although not a summer's day passed that I did not endure corporeal fear from the approach of insecta, there are five important periods or crises of my life, when my evil star reigned especially malignant. One of these, which I have just recorded, is, peradventure, of small moment, but the subject of it was but small at that time. Each however, thou wilt observe, increased in importance as my shoulders expanded for its burden, verily greater at seasons than I could well bear. My second crisis was at the puerile age of eleven.

I was seated in school, near an open window, when a little girl on the outside offered to barter a basket of blackberries with me, for two large red cheeked apples, balancing each other in my jacket pockets. I slyly effected the exchange, "the master" (as New England instructers are very improperly termed—Instructer being the proper and more respectable appellative) having his back turned, and poured the berries into my hat, which I placed in my lap beneath the bench, and forthwith began eating them one by one with my forefinger and thumb, my eyes the while immoveably fixed on my open book, (alas! how early do we begin to practise deceit !) when, at length, in the midst of my deler table feast, I was conscious of a strange, portentous titillation

ternal induction, and secondly, that it is classical, and moreover well approved by scriptural and ancient usage, and I am somewhat given to philological antiquarianism-a lover, or as the Gallic hath it, an amateur of antique customs of phraseology.

upon my forefinger, which sensation gradually extended mother had in her maidenly estate been of the sect along the member towards the hand. I trembled from called Quakers, and my father was a preacher after the a sort of presentiment of the cause, and fearfully looked Methodist persuasion-neither sect, in that day, disdown, when, monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens! as tinguished patrons of the humane letters. My mother Maro hath it, I beheld a tight-laced, long-legged yel- had seceded from the Society of Friends, yet retained low-streaked wasp, with a sticky, sluggish motion their simplicity of language and manners, at least so dragging his slow length along the back of my hand, his far, as a naturally sharp temper would allow; certes, it wings and feet, clotted with the juice of the berries, may not be concealed that the neighboring gossips among which he had till now been secreted, whether averred that she was too fond of that spousely privilege designedly or not, I will not be so uncharitable as to of scolding, to be a Quaker, and therefore had come over determine, albeit, my playmates, aware of my weak- to a more liberal faith. However this may be, she exness did not refrain when occasion offered, from putting hibited in her person the opposite characters of a scoldupon me unpleasant jests of this nature. When I ing wife and demure Quaker, as the thermometer rose beheld the wasp (it was an individual of the species or fell, tempered nevertheless, with a little of the leven called the yellow-jacket, exceedingly venomous and fe- of Methodism. My father was a sturdy apostle, morose rocious of aspect), I incontinently uplifted my voice in and gloomy, given to antique phraseology in his speech, such a cry-Scotticé a skirl, as birch nor ferule never after the manner of my grandfather, who was a staunch expelled from the lungs of luckless urchin within those old Presbyterian. Therefore, between the three, my walls-long, loud, and terrific, subsiding only, to be domestic education and habits, were like Joseph's renewed on a higher key. At the same time stretching coat of many colors, and when I arrived to the years of forth my hand, upon which clung the dreaded object, discretion, it would have been a hard matter to deterwhich I had not the power to touch, fearing lest the at- mine, which preponderated most in my character, the tempt to dislodge him, would be the signal for the inser- Methodist, the Quaker, or Scotch Presbyterian. The tion of his sting into my hand, I leaped from the win-second person thou, and its objective singular thee, I dow with a loud yell, which was echoed sympatheti- nevertheless always use colloquially; firstly, from macally by the whole school, and with my hand waving in the air, which I filled with my cries, directed my course for home, a third of a mile distant, with all the boys of the school let loose, and shouting like a pack of devils born, at my heels. In my career, I remember leaping over two cows lying and quietly ruminating in my path, and that I run full tilt against the deacon, sending hat, wig and deacon in three diverse directions. After running a muck, as Mr. Pope useth the word, through the village, I attained my father's house, into which I broke without lifting latch, so impetuous was my course and crying in a loud voice, "a wasp! a wasp!" thrust my arm (for the insect had now crawled up to my elbow) before my mother's eyes. It chanced that, as I entered she was lifting from the fire a pot of boiling water, in which she intended to scald a couple of barn door fowls, for the meridian meal. Alarmed at my cries and sudden appearance, and terrified beyond measure at beholding the terrible insect thrust so near her face, and at the same time trembling on account of my own danger, with something between a yell and a shriek, she grappled the handle of the pot with one hand and its bottom with the other, and dashed the scalding contents over my arm and body. With a yell finale I again darted out through the door, leaving the wasp scalded to death on the floor. Encountering on the outside the host of my schoolmates, who were running towards the house, I passed through their midst like a rocket, giving blows to the right and left, and leaving, as I was afterwards told, five prostrate upon the earth. At length, exhausted through fatigue and suffering, I fell in the street in a swoon, and was carried home and put to bed, from whence I rose not until two painful months had expired. The two periods I have recorded, involved merely physical suffering. The third, and remaining two, record distresses both mental and physical. The third period, which may, with reverence, be denominated the third plague of insects, happened at college in my twenty-first year. I have enjoyed the benefit of collegiate erudition, although my

I had assumed the toga virilis, and passed through my quadrennial course, how I might here mention, but it becometh me not to speak in mine own praise; suffice it to say, that I was appointed to a thesis on the day of Commencement, that I ascended the rostrum or stage, made my obeisance to the audience, and forthwith began to declaim with sonorous enunciation. I had got into the midst of my thesis, and, flattered by the attentive silence with which I was listened to, I grew warm with my theme; my right arm was stretched forth with a rhetorical flourish, my eyes were illuminated and sparkling with excitement, and my brows were flushed as I threw my whole soul into the rush of eloquence (verily the reminiscence maketh me eloquent even now,) and I was altogether on what may be termed the high horse of success and public admiration, when mirabile dictu, as Virgil hath it on a less occasion, suddenly an ominous and well-known buzzing above my head fell like a knell on my ears. Be it premised, that the meeting-house in which the Commencement exercises were held, was decorated with evergreens, and adorned with numerous sweet-scented flowers, with one of which, I had, in my youthful vanity, graced the buttonhole of my white waistcoat. I lifted my eyes at the sound, more dreadful to my tympana than the horn of the hunter to the timid deer, and beheld my hereditary foe, in the shape of a long, slender, yellow-ringed wasp, darting in wild gyrations above my head, and at each revolution, approaching nearer and more near to my ill-fated person. Vox faucibus hæsit as Virgil again expresseth it, my voice clung to my jaws, my extended arm remained motionless, and with my eyes fastened, as if fascinated, upon the intruder, I lost all presence of mind, every other consideration being swallowed up in the consideration of my great peril. I stood nearly the

space of one minute, the audience being all the while | own peculiar misery, I darted, as I have before said, silent as the grave, as if transfixed and petrified, ex- toward an elderly maiden lady, and thrusting the branch hibiting no signs of life save in my eyes, which followed into her unwilling hand, cried in a loud voice, “brush the eccentric circles of my foe as he wheeled around my it off! oh brush it off!" So impetuously did I thrust it head, which he had chosen as the conspicuous centre of towards her, that I lost my equilibrium and fell into her his aerial corkscrew: the pillar of salt into which the lap, entangling as I fell, the branch of hemlock in her wife of Lot was converted, did not stand firmer or more red curls, which, as is the fashion among women, were motionless. Gradually contracting his spiral circles he only attached to her head, and as I rolled from her procame close to my head, and then with a sudden move- faned lap to the floor, I carried with me on the branch ment roared past my ear and settled upon the fragrant waving like pennons, the elderly maiden lady's false flower adorning, vanitas vanitatis, my waistcoat. The and fiery tresses appended thereto. She lifted up her roar of his passage past my ear, augmented in my voice and screamed with combined affright, rage and imagination to that of a dragon (provided always there mortification, and jumping up she stamped upon me as be such creatures, and being such if they do roar, which I lay at her feet in ungovernable ire. "But there is are points controverted by the learned) and his fearful no evil unattended with good." (I give the Saxon or attack upon my person, was a consummation which English words of the proverb, the original Latin having restored me to the use of my paralyzed faculties. My slipped my memory.) The wasp, the direct cause of first act was to leap from the rostrum with a suppressed all the mischief, who had adhered to me like my evil cry, and seize a branch of hemlock, thrust it towards angel, received the full weight of her heel on the tergum the nearest person, who happened to be a lady, and and was crushed to atoms, upon the snow-white bosom make signs for her to brush it off. I never had dared of my shirt. I heard every section of his body crack, to snap them off or disturb them. My mother, whose and as I listened I felt a savage joy fill my breast, temconversation, (as those who fear ghosts, most love to pered however, as I now remember, by an incipient hold midnight converse about them) was prolific on this apprehension, lest even in death, he might avenge his theme, had early inducted me into the most approved fall by penetrating my linen and cuticle with his sting. plans of conduct, when one of the irritabile genus approached or lit on the person. One of her rules was, never snap it off, for it is sure to sting before it fly ; but run and let the wind blow it off." Another was, "if it will still stay on, then get some other person to brush it off, and its anger will be turned from you to that obliging person.” These rules of action, and many others, were fresh in my memory, and I was at all times religiously governed by them.

Now that the danger was over, I had time to reflect for an instant and feel the ridiculous peculiarity of my situation, and at once decided upon taking to flight, to escape facing the audience. The next moment I was on my feet, and forcing my way to the door fled towards the college, as if a whole nest of hornets was in full cry in pursuit, followed by a motley crowd, who are comprised in the French word canaille, some shouting "there goes dragon-fly-there goes bumble-bee! stop thief! The branch of hemlock chanced to be attached to a murder!" and all the various cries the populace are used festoon connecting a succession of others around the to utter, when they pursue without knowing why or pulpit, where sate the President in all the dignity which wherefore, the wretch who fleeth. The next day I dean austere air, a corpulent person, and a broad-brim parted from the scene of my disgrace and disaster, and could confer, presiding over the exercises of the hour. in course of time found myself in the pleasant village Immediately behind him rose to some height a young of Geneva in the western part of the state of New eradicated pine tree, whose pyramidal summit formed York, teacher of a respectable school. I may say here the central support and apex of the chain of festoons, in passing, that from inclination I have adopted teachanswering in relation thereto, to the stake which up- ing as a profession-for although not ranked among the holds the drooping centre of a clothes-line. At my learned professions it verily should be. This profession attack the whole paraphernalia gave way, pine tree or vocation I still pursue, even here, far off in Misand all, with a tremendous rustling and crashing, carry-sissippi, whither my wanderings have at length driven ing away in its headlong rush the President's broad- me. brim and one of the capacious sleeves of his black silk gown or surplice, his reverend dignity alone saving himself from sharing the same fate by ducking beneath the ballustrade of the pulpit and permitting the danger to pass over him, which it did, descending upon the respected heads and sacred persons of the honorable Board of Trustees sitting beneath. The uproar and confusion-laughter mingled with exclamations, was without limit, and while every soul seemed to be absorbed in the crash and its consequences, I, the luckless author of the whole demolition, saw, heard, felt and was conscious of nothing but the presence of the dreaded insect, that had fastened on me, who was now, having evacuated the flower, hastily effecting a retreat within the gaping bosom of my shirt. My tremendous pull at the twig, left it however in my hands, and while the wreck of matter was going on above and around me, oblivious of all else save my

The fourth plague of stings was when I had attained the discreet age of thirty-one years, I being then a resident and schoolmaster of the then infant town of Rochester, having taught with divers degrees of success in many other villages after I left Geneva, which I departed from after a sojourn there of twelve calendar months. Having laid by a small store of wordly coin, and being held generally in good repute among my neighbors, I began to bethink me that it was best to take unto myself a wife, according to the commandment. When I came to this resolve I, the next Sunday, cast my eyes about the church to see on whom my choice should light, revolving in my mind as my eyes wandered from one bonnet to another, the capabilities of each for the dignity of mater-familias to Instructer Stingflyer (for such is my patronymic, my given name being Abel) when I decided propounding the question of matrimony to Miss Deborah, or as she was called among her ac

"Why, I dont know if I do rightly, but I can easily find it," she answered complacently, soothed by my grain of flattery, for herein Ovid had taught me the sex is accessible; and laying her knitting upon my knees she hastened to bring the family Bible, which she spread open on a small light stand discreetly placed between us, and began diligently to turn over the leaves of the quarto, but rather as if she were seeking the book of Revelations than that of Genesis. I made bold to hint that it might be best to begin at the com-loud hum into the room through the open window, mencement of the book, when turning thither, much to her delight, and as her manner betrayed, much to her surprise, she found the book named, and soon after, the chapter and verse, and forthwith commenced reading

aiming point blank for the candle, which chanced to stand in a line between me and the aforesaid window, and with the force of a cross-bolt, struck me between the eyes, as I continued to remain in my attitude of genuflection, and partly from terror, and in part from 'It is not good that man should be alone; I the force of the blow, with a loud exclamation, I fell will make a help meet for him.' Why what is there in backwards upon the floor like one who had been this verse so very remarkable Mr. Stingflyer!" she wounded even unto the death. The next moment,

alive to the ludicrousness of my situation, I recovered | schoolmasters," drawn thither by the reports that had myself-which recovery was not a little expedited by reached mine ears, of the richness of the land; and in

a town a few miles from Cincinnati, I resumed my occupation of instilling knowledge into the minds of the rising generation. It came to pass after I had sojourned here nearly the space of two years, I was appointed the orator for the fourth of July, A.D. 1825. My thesis, or oration, prepared for this occasion, was previously read by me to two or three village oracles, with much applause, which, in justice to myself, and more especially to the judgment of the committee, by whom I had the honor of being appointed, I must confess my composition fully merited.

the undisguised laughter of the merry maiden, on whose lips I was about to place the seal of requited affection: experience having not then instructed my youth, omnium mulierum fugiantur oscula. But my sufferings were not terminated. I fain would have laughed my disaster off, pretending that it was only a conceit of my own, to fall as if shot with a bullet, had not my ears been assailed, as I rose again to my feet, by the appalling burring and whizzing of the enemy, darting fiercely about the room, now thumping violently against the opposite wall, now buzzing by my head with a hum like a hundred tops, the whole more dreadful on The procession was formed opposite the Masonic account of the darkness of the extremities of the apart-Hall, I being appointed to an honorable rank therein, ment, which rendered it exceedingly difficult to follow, with any certainty, the motions of the insect, and thereby guard against his approach. My first impulse was to leap from the window, to the utter demolition of Miss Deborah's flower-beds. But guessing my desperate resolve, by the frenzied roll of my eyes in that direction, and the preparatory movements of my limbs, she closed it, oh fœmina, semper mulabile! with a sudden jerk and a loud laugh, as if delectating herself with my terrors. Certes, since that period, my sentiments in relation to the softness and charity of womankind, have been revised! Thwarted in this point, my next impulse was to endeavor to gain the door-which purpose I at length effected, after dodging the transverse courses of the beetle as he traversed the room; and throwing it open I sprung through it, not into the passage, but into Miss Deborah's china closet, and striking my foot against a jar of preserves, upset it, and pitched irresistibly against the lower shelf laden with her choicest domestic wares, and amid a jangling, crashing, cracking and rattling, sufficient to make even the deaf hear, I fell to the floor, receiving in my fall, by way of corollary, divers contusions from the falling ruins, and lay, like Samson, buried in the wreck I had myself created.

even the foremost of the van, save the musicians and marshal; the music struck up, and with martial pace it proceeded through the principal streets of the town, towards the church, which I flattered myself I was about to fill with Demosthenean eloquence. As I moved forward, a blue ribbon waving its pennons at the button-hole of my coat, my bosom swelled with a due consciousness of the conspicuousness of my situation, and I felt that every eye was fixed upon me in admiration, if not envy: my step was firm, as it rose and fell to the strains of music-my chest expanded, and my head was elevated-and gracefully did I carry in my hand the manuscript, also garnished with a gay knot of blue ribbon, whose written eloquence was that day to enchain men's minds, and fill their souls with patriotism. No Roman, entering the imperial city after a victory, on a triumphal car, ever bore a prouder heart than I did that day-alas, dies infaustus! In our circumambulatory progress through the village, traversing its every lane and alley, that all might witness the pageant of which I was "the head and front," we passed through a straggling angle of the town-a sort of detached suburb, when the music was all at once drowned by a loud and discordant din, caused by the beating of tin-kettles, the clattering of warming-pans, the jingling of sleigh-bells, The laughter of Miss Debby was hereupon suddenly the tooting of horns, and the clamor of women and changed to a loud key of mingled surprise, anger and children, saluting the tympana with a babelian confusion grief, in which she attacked me with a volley of unde- not unworthy of the precincts of the infernal regions, served vituperation and abuse, considering that the while at the same time, a wretched alley just in advance hedge-chafer, and not I, was the author of the mischief. of us, poured out a motley crowd of slattern wives and Bruised, mortified and exceedingly chap-fallen, I at breechless urchins, armed with a thousand tongues, and length dragged my unlucky body forth, notwithstand-beating every instrument whereof the chronicles of dising I still heard the buzz-wzz, zz, of the formidable bug in his flight about the room; but between his whizzing and the clamor of Miss Deborah's tongue, I was left to choose between Scylla and Charybdis. But I will dwell no longer upon this event. I effected my escape as well as I could, and the next Monday morning made up the loss of earthen vessels in coin, to the mother of Miss Deborah. And verily here ended my first and last attempt to secure a mater-familias, to perpetuate the ill-fated patronymic of Stingflyer to posterity.

cord have made mention. But a sight more dreadful, a sound more horrible, alone filled my ears and concentrated my optics. Over the heads of this clamorous multitude hung a dark cloud of bees, whose million wings sent forth a sound like the roaring of the sea. Appalling vision! each particular hair of my head stood on end, and my heart leaped into my throat.

At the sight of the procession the clamor ceased, and the women, duces facti, retreated from view, while the vaccilating swarm, attracted by the music, now alone Four woes have passed, and yet another woe cometh. heard, wheeled towards the head of our column, and My adventure in the china-closet having been bruited darkened the air above my head. There are, it hath about the village, my pupils, (such being ever ready to verily been asserted, some persons whom bees will not fasten a nickname upon their instructers,) conferring sting, (an asseveration which I am inclined to controupon me the unseemly appellation of "Hedge-chafer," vert,) and reversely, that there are others, whom they determined me to change my place of habitation. I will take pains to sting, of whom I am one especially next, after divers wanderings, pitched my tent in the honored. From childhood to manhood, whether a boy state of Ohio, which hath been called "the paradise of in a crowd of boys, or a man in a throng of men, a bee