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Read Ebook: The British Campaign in France and Flanders 1915 by Doyle Arthur Conan
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A WORD TO THE CHILDREN AND THE WISE v
NOTE.--We do not think it practicable to give classifications except as they exist unnamed in the above titles: straight winged: locusts, grasshoppers, crickets, katydids; tooth-shaped: dragon-flies; ephemerals: may-flies; half-winged: leaf and tree hoppers; nerve-winged: lace-wings, ant-lions, and caddis-worms; two-winged: flies and mosquitoes; scaly winged: butterflies and moths; sheath-winged: beetles; membranous-winged: bees, wasps, and ants.
A WORD TO THE CHILDREN AND THE WISE
And we who wrote this book? Well, we, too, have been children. We used to climb trees and turn somersaults; why--But that is another story! And we remember so well what it used to be like to have to learn dull things we did not wish to know. So we said to ourselves, as we looked over our spectacles at each other, "No, they sha'n't be told a single uninteresting fact; they sha'n't be dull, poor dears, as we were so long ago, before we put on spectacles and began to call ourselves wise."
And so, although we sat down and wrote a book just about long enough for a school-year's work; although we felt very proud because our stories had more wonderful six-legged creatures than any book written for children; although we took pains to have in the book only such little creatures as any one of us could see any day; although we hoped that mothers and teachers would say, "At last, this is a book the children and I can like and find useful!" or, "There, that will help as a starting-point to tell about the bees and the flowers!" or, "This story about the flies will teach the children what it means to be clean!" Although, I say, we hoped all these things, yet our chief hope was that we might give all sorts of children a good time.
So we put our spectacles on and looked very wise, and took a quantity of ink on our pens and began to write. And we wrote and wrote and wrote. And part of the time, while one of us was writing and hoping the stories would be so interesting the children would want to write about them, too, the other was drawing and labelling each sketch so plainly that any child could understand it, even if the ears were quite where they could not be expected to be, or there were more eyes than, seemingly, one creature ought to have, or wings and legs served to make music, as no sensible child could possibly guess.
And now we can't do better than wish you a good time before we say good-bye. We wish you to enjoy all the frolics, to feel how jolly it is to be out-of-doors in the woods and fields and lakes, climbing, canoeing, picnicing, and swimming.
But still more, we hope that you will realize that more wonderful than the most wonderful fairy story ever told is the marvel of the created life of these little insects; we want you to come to know something of their joys and troubles; we want you to learn how to be kind to them, and how they may be useful to you; and we want you to find out for yourselves the places they take in the great plan of creation.
In other words, we want you to think and feel about the lives of these six-legged busybodies, and see for yourselves how much even a butterfly can add to the interest and beauty of living. Does this seem a little bit like a sermon? Well, you see, we forgot we had kept on our spectacles so long, and somehow spectacles always turn into sermons. Perhaps it is because both begin with the letter S.
And now this is all of our short word to the wise. We expect to make each one of our books better than the last, and you can help us to do this by writing any suggestions you may have. We shall be glad to hear from children, big or little.
J. M. and J. M.
South Hadley, Massachusetts, January 27, 1909.
LITTLE BUSYBODIES
THE JOURNEY
"It will be stories all summer, won't it?" said Betty to her mother.
"Yes, dear."
"And hunting, too?" said Jimmie.
"Hunting with your new gun and hunting with your camera."
Jimmie unfastened the case of his new camera and looked in. What a beautiful one it was, and what pictures he meant to take, and how the camera would impress Ben Gile! Jimmie looked about proudly. He knew no other boy in that whole great train had a camera like the one his father had given him.
"Mother, when will it be lunch?" asked Betty.
"Luncheon so soon!"
"I'm as hungry as a bear," declared Jimmie.
"And hear Kitty mewing; she's hungry, too." Betty looked at the big round basket, whose cover kept restlessly stirring.
"Did you leave something in the baggage-car for Max to eat?" Mrs. Reece asked Jimmie.
"Yes, mum. It's one o'clock; can't we have something now?"
"As late as that! No wonder you chickens are hungry for--"
"Chicken!" squealed Betty.
"And ham sandwiches!" added Jimmie.
"And chocolate cake!"
"And root-beer!"
"And peppermints!"
"Ssh!" said Mrs. Reece, "or every one in the car will know what little piggies you are. Ask Lizzie for the basket."
Every minute the air was growing cooler. The children could smell the pine woods, and once in a while the train flashed by a great big sawmill, or a lake set like a sapphire in the deep green of the forests. And the hills were rolling nearer and nearer in great shadows. The children ate their luncheon contentedly, looking out of the windows and thinking of the mountains there would be to climb, the ponds, the streams to fish, the pictures to take, and the stories they were to hear the summer long.
"Mother," said Betty, eating her second piece of chocolate cake--"mother, what will Ben Gile tell us this summer?"
"Let me see," said her mother, "perhaps it will be about the little creatures--grasshoppers and katydids, butterflies and bees."
"Goody!"
"Pooh!" said Jimmie, "I don't see what you want to know of those old things. I'd much rather hear about porcupines. There isn't anything to say about a grasshopper except that it hops."
"Isn't there, my son? Well, that shows that you don't use your eyes. Suppose some one said there was nothing to say about you except that you whistle?"
"Well, what is there about an old grasshopper, anyhow?"
"I don't know, but Ben will."
"But tell us something, mum," urged Jimmie, who loved his mother dearly, and was certain she knew more than anybody else, in part because she had been to college, but chiefly because she was his mother.
"Let me see," said Mrs. Reece, "I shall have to think about it." Both of the children came as close to her as they could, while she continued:
"What a strange world it would be if there were no insects in it! We should have no little crickets chirping in the sunny fields or in the dark corners and cracks of our houses. There would be no katydids singing all night, no clacking of the locusts in the tall grass along dusty roads, no drowsy hum of bees. There would be no little ants and big ants digging out underground tunnels and carrying the grains of sand as far from their doorways as possible. There would be no brightly colored moths and butterflies flitting from flower to flower. We should find no sparkling fairy webs spun anew for us every morning."
"But, mother, all these creatures aren't insects," said Jimmie.
"Yes, they are, dear. It is hard to believe that they all belong to the same family called insecta, but they do."
"Mother, what's that word mean?"
"It doesn't mean anything more than cut up into parts. You see, Betty, all these insect bodies are made up of separate rings joined nicely together. If you look carefully you will find that behind the head there is another distinct part. This is called the thorax, which means chest. Behind that there is a pointed part of the body, which is called the abdomen. Then, if you look again, you will see that all these little creatures are alike in that they have six jointed legs."
"And are they all good, like the bee and the butterfly?" asked Betty, who wasn't always a good little girl herself, and who thought it would be much nicer if insects were naughty sometimes.
"Not all, dear," answered Mrs. Reece; "some do us real service, but others are troublesome; insects are such hungry little fellows, and they don't have chocolate cake every day to keep them from getting hungry. They are hungry when they are babies and hungry when they grow up. Some eat all they can see--like a little boy I know--and some prefer the tender leaves and twigs. Some care only for the sweet sap flowing into the new leaves and buds. And still others like best the tender new roots of plants."
"Mother, what are the baddest ones?" asked Betty.
"Pooh! I know," said Jimmie; "the beetles are, because they eat everything. Why, they'd eat the buttons off your coat or the nose off your face or--"
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