I'll try a little of that myself," and hopping back to the mucilage
bottle for a start he took a header at the lamp. Except that his silver
wings trembled, and his velvet legs drew up, he never moved again. I
had lost a good friend whose innocent ramblings I had watched for hours
and whose antics, when he tasted the ink or got a sniff of the ammonia,
had much amused me. I don't know that he died too early. He had learned
a bad habit, and for a man or a Bug who has learned a bad habit, I am
not certain that death can come too soon. He died thinking he knew
everything worth knowing, for I have no doubt that through the panes
of my window and across my narrow street he thought he had seen the
World. Just as we larger, but not wiser animals think that after gazing
through our little theological panes, we have seen clear through
Eternity, and into the mind of the Father. After all, my Moth was not
worse off than the rest of us. We have all our little streets which
we call the World, and our little pane of glass through which we think
we see all that is worth seeing, and we need but a soupcon of bad
example to make us blindly dash into the worst of follies. Let us never
forget that, more than for this Moth, there is for us an unseen Hand
that after these follies picks us up and starts us on our course again,
with a pitying touch, and that, more than this, when the last twilight
of evening shall gather around us, and the hands of those we love can
be no longer seen, there shall appear to us through the gray mist of
Death, that bright and gentle Hand, and with it the face of a Father
and a Friend.




OBSERVATIONS OF A RETIRED VETERAN IV