rn to digest them. They dislike castor oil,
though, and keep away from where it has been rubbed.

Cockroaches are intelligent beings. Their natures are human. They are
not like other insects, any more than dogs are like other animals. I
wish some man of science and sympathy would interpret their lives.

That book that I dream of on roaches: will it ever be written? Brown
Beauty, or Only a Cockroach, by Mary Gook Twillee--a book that little
children would read with wet eyes Sunday evenings. No, that sounds like
a pamphlet from the Society for the Prevention of Stepping on
Cockroaches. We want nothing humanitarian. Still less, a Work on the
subject. We want a poet to do for the cockroach what Maeterlinck has
done for the Bee.

If nobody else will, I shall probably have to do it myself.

* * * * *

Since boyhood (I shall begin) I have felt the injustice of men to the
roach. Or not men, no; but women. Men are in this matter more tolerant,
more live-and-let-live in their ways. But women have condemned the roach
not only unheard, but unjudged. Not one of them has ever tried petting a
roach to gain his affection. Not one of them has studied him or
encouraged him to show his good side. Some cockroaches, for instance,
are exceedingly playful and gay, but what chance have they to show this,
when being stepped on, or chased with a broom? Suppose we had treated
dogs this way; scared them; made fugitives of them!

No, the human race, though kind to its favorites, is cruel to others.
The pale little, lovable cockroach has been given no show. If a
housewife would call to her roaches as she does to her hens, "Here
chick-chick, here cock-cock, here roaches," how they would come
scampering! They would eat from her hand and lay eggs for her--they do
now, in fact.

"But the eggs are not legible--I mean edible," an excited reader
objects. How do you know, my poor prejudiced reader? Have you ever tried
them? And suppose they are not. Is that the fault of the cockroach or
God?

We should learn that blind enmity is not the attitude to take toward
strangers. The cockroach has journeyed from Asia to come to our shores;
and because he looked queer, like most Asiatics, he has been condemned
from the start. The charges are that he is dirty and that he eats the
food we leave lying around. Well, well, well! Eats our food, does he? Is
that a crime? Do not birds do the same? And as to his being dirty, have
you e