accumulation proves an
entirely different thing. When you point out this miscarriage to him he
does not answer your letters; when you call to convince him, the servant
prevaricates and you do not get in. Scientists have odious manners,
except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them.

To be strictly fair, I will concede that now and then one of them will
answer your letter, but when they do they avoid the issue--you cannot
pin them down. When I discovered that the bee was human I wrote about it
to all those scientists whom I have just mentioned. For evasions, I have
seen nothing to equal the answers I got.

After the queen, the personage next in importance in the hive is the
virgin. The virgins are fifty thousand or one hundred thousand in
number, and they are the workers, the laborers. No work is done, in the
hive or out of it, save by them. The males do not work, the queen does
no work, unless laying eggs is work, but it does not seem so to me.
There are only two million of them, anyway, and all of five months
to finish the contract in. The distribution of work in a hive is
as cleverly and elaborately specialized as it is in a vast American
machine-shop or factory. A bee that has been trained to one of the many
and various industries of the concern doesn't know how to exercise any
other, and would be offended if asked to take a hand in anything outside
of her profession. She is as human as a cook; and if you should ask the
cook to wait on the table, you know what will happen. Cooks will play
the piano if you like, but they draw the line there. In my time I have
asked a cook to chop wood, and I know about these things. Even the hired
girl has her frontiers; true, they are vague, they are ill-defined, even
flexible, but they are there. This is not conjecture; it is founded on
the absolute. And then the butler. You ask the butler to wash the dog.
It is just as I say; there is much to be learned in these ways, without
going to books. Books are very well, but books do not cover the whole
domain of esthetic human culture. Pride of profession is one of the
boniest bones in existence, if not the boniest. Without doubt it is so
in the hive.

TAMING THE BICYCLE

In the early eighties Mark Twain learned to ride one of the old
high-wheel bicycles of that period. He wrote an account of his
experience, but did not offer it for publication. The form of bicycle he
rode long ago became antiquated,