his resolute observation, there is one and the same expression of
perfect egotism, perfect independence and self-confidence, and
conviction of the world's having been made for flies.

4. Strike at him with your hand, and to him, the mechanical fact
and external aspect of the matter is, what to you it would be if
an acre of red clay, ten feet thick, tore itself up from the
ground in one massive field, hovered over you in the air for a
second, and came crashing down with an aim. That is the external
aspect of it; the inner aspect, to his fly's mind, is of a quite
natural and unimportant occurrence--one of the momentary
conditions of his active life. He steps out of the way of your
hand, and alights on the back of it.

5. You cannot terrify him, nor govern him, nor persuade him, nor
convince him. He has his own positive opinion on all matters; not
an unwise one, usually, for his own ends; and will ask no advice
of yours. He has no work to do--no tyrannical instinct to obey.
The earthworm has his digging; the bee her gathering and building;
the spider her cunning network; the ant her treasury and accounts.
All these are comparatively slaves, or people of vulgar business.

6. But your fly, free in the air, free in the chamber--a black
incarnation of caprice, wandering, investigating, flitting,
flirting, feasting at his will, with rich variety of choice in
feast, from the heaped sweets in the grocer's window to those of
the butcher's back yard, and from the galled place on your cab-
horse's back, to the brown spot in the road, from which, as the
hoof disturbs him, he rises with angry republican buzz--what
freedom is like his?