tops of felt (which, under other hands,
has, I believe, since succeeded); and he had found a rich man (I suppose
a hatter) who seemed well inclined to the project, and had actually
asked him to dine and expound his views.

CHAPTER III.

Here we three are seated round the open window--after dinner--familiar
as in the old happy time--and my mother is talking low, that she may not
disturb my father, who seems in thought--

Cr-cr-crrr-cr-cr! I feel it--I have it. Where! What! Where!
Knock it down; brush it off! For Heaven's sake, see to it!
Crrrr-crrrrr--there--here--in my hair--in my sleeve--in my ear--cr-cr.

I say solemnly, and on the word of a Christian, that as I sat down to
begin this chapter, being somewhat in a brown study, the pen insensibly
slipped from my hand, and leaning back in my chair, I fell to gazing in
the fire. It is the end of June, and a remarkably cold evening, even for
that time of year. And while I was so gazing I felt something crawling
just by the nape of the neck, ma'am. Instinctively and mechanically, and
still musing, I put my hand there, and drew forth What? That what it is
which perplexes me. It was a thing--a dark thing--a much bigger thing
than I had expected. And the sight took me so by surprise that I gave my
hand a violent shake, and the thing went--where I know not. The what and
the where are the knotty points in the whole question! No sooner had
it gone than I was seized with repentance not to have examined it more
closely; not to have ascertained what the creature was. It might have
been an earwig,--a very large, motherly earwig; an earwig far gone in
that way in which earwigs wish to be who love their lords. I have a
profound horror of earwigs; I firmly believe that they do get into the
ear. That is a subject on which it is useless to argue with me upon
philosophical grounds. I have a vivid recollection of a story told me
by Mrs. Primmins,--how a lady for many years suffered under the most
excruciating headaches; how, as the tombstones say, "physicians were in
vain;" how she died; and how her head was opened, and how such a nest of
earwigs, ma'am, such a nest! Earwigs are the prolifickest things, and
so fond of their offspring! They sit on their eggs like hens, and the
young, as soon as they are born, creep under them for protection,--quite
touchingly! Imagine such an establishment domesticated at one's
tympanum!

But the creature was certainly larger than an earwig. It mi