of each hand. I knew the tricks and the manners of what I
learned, many years later, that naturalists describe as the _mantis
religiosa_, or praying-mantis, because in off-hours,--_i.e._ when they
are not foraging or fighting--they will sit upon their hind quarters and
"fold the stout anterior legs in a manner suggesting hands folded in
prayer."

I had caught dozens of them and fed them for days in a box with coarse
lace tied over the top to prevent escape, and studied their habits, and
humored their propensities by putting several together in the prison
that forthwith became an arena, in which _duello_ and general scrimmage
relieved one another in enchanting succession.

I explained now, to my diverted companion, that I held them by their
backs so that they could not bite me, and pointed out the wicked heads
turning almost quite around in their savage efforts to avenge their
capture. I was sure, I said excitedly, that these two were fighting up
in the tree, and that was the way they happened to drop so close
together. Had she never seen devil's race-horses fight? Mother didn't
like that name for them, so I 'most always said just "race-horses"
plain, _so_. Only, when they were very cross, the other word would slip
out.

"If I were to let them go this minute, they'd begin to fight, 'stead of
running away," I concluded. "S'pose we try them."

Entering into my humor, she improvised a cockpit by spreading her
pocket-handkerchief upon the ground, and I liberated the gladiators.

They more than justified my account of their ferocity by grappling on
the instant, each rising to his full height and hurling himself at his
opponent's throat.

"You see they are acquainted with one another," I commented, as umpire
and manager. "They just begin where they left off up in the tree."

It was an exciting display. Cousin Molly Belle raised herself upon her
elbow; I doubled tightly under me what I now let myself think of as my
legs, and spread both hands flat on the grass, to lean over the arena.
In the hush that followed the onslaught the babbling song Bud crooned
to himself as he crawled over the sun-and-shade dappled turf harmonized
with the sleepy shaking of the leaves about us. Such another
happy-hearted baby was never seen. And so wise, as I have said, for a
yearling! never getting into mischief, and afraid of nothing.

I peeped through a kinetoscope last winter at a prize fight. I have
never beheld anything that so closely