an entomologist?--I said with a note of
interrogation.

-Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on
the individual entitled to that name! A society may call itself an
Entomological Society, but the man who arrogates such a broad title as
that to himself, in the present state of science, is a pretender, sir, a
dilettante, an impostor! No man can be truly called an entomologist,
sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.

--May I venture to ask,--I said, a little awed by his statement and
manner,--what is your special province of study?

I am often spoken of as a Coleopterist,--he said,--but I have no right to
so comprehensive a name. The genus Scarabaeus is what I have chiefly
confined myself to, and ought to have studied exclusively. The beetles
proper are quite enough for the labor of one man's life. Call me a
Scarabaeist if you will; if I can prove myself worthy of that name, my
highest ambition will be more than satisfied.

I think, by way of compromise and convenience, I shall call him the
Scarabee. He has come to look wonderfully like those creatures,--the
beetles, I mean,---by being so much among them. His room is hung round
with cases of them, each impaled on a pin driven through him, something
as they used to bury suicides. These cases take the place for him of
pictures and all other ornaments. That Boy steals into his room
sometimes, and stares at them with great admiration, and has himself
undertaken to form a rival cabinet, chiefly consisting of flies, so far,
arranged in ranks superintended by an occasional spider.

The old Master, who is a bachelor, has a kindly feeling for this little
monkey, and those of his kind.

--I like children,--he said to me one day at table,--I like 'em, and I
respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the
world is done by them. Do you know they play the part in the household
which the king's jester, who very often had a mighty long head under his
cap and bells, used to play for a monarch? There 's no radical club like
a nest of little folks in a nursery. Did you ever watch a baby's
fingers? I have, often enough, though I never knew what it was to own
one.---The Master paused half a minute or so,--sighed,--perhaps at
thinking what he had missed in life,--looked up at me a little vacantly.
I saw what was the matter; he had lost the thread of his talk.

--Baby's fingers,--I intercal