prodigal; and that aware of this I had kept him with me until he found
himself again.

So when folks met him and Kerry they smiled and spoke, for we are
friendly people and send no man to Coventry without great cause. And
there wasn't a child, black or white, who didn't know and like the
man with the butterfly net.

The country people for miles around knew and loved him, too; for he
walked up and down the earth and went to and fro in it, full of
curious and valuable knowledge shared freely as the need arose. He
would glance at your flower-garden, for instance, and tell you what
insect visitors your flowers had, and what you should do to check
their ravages. He'd walk about your out-buildings and commend
white-wash, and talk about insecticides; and you'd learn that bees are
partial to blue, but flies are not; and that mosquitoes seem to
dislike certain shades of yellow. And then he'd leave you to digest
it.

He was a quiet evangelist, a forerunner of that Grand Army which will
some day arise, not to murder and maim men, but to conquer man's
deadliest foe and greatest economic menace--the injurious insect.

It was he who spread the tidings of Corn and Poultry and Live Stock
Clubs, stopping by many a lonely farm to whisper a word in the ears of
discouraged boys, or to drop a hint to unenlightened fathers and
mothers.

He carried about in his pockets those invaluable reports and bulletins
which the government issues for the benefit and enlightenment of
farmers; and these were left, with a word of praise, where they would
do the most good.

Those same bulletins from the Bureau of Entomology had planted in John
Flint's heart the seed which bore such fruit of good citizenship. The
whole course of his early years had tended to make him suspicious of
government, which spelt for him police and prison, the whole grim
machinery which threatened him and which he in turn threatened. He had
feared and hated it; it caught men and shut them up and broke them. If
he ever asked himself, "What can my government do for me?" he had to
answer: "It can put me in prison and keep me there; it can even send me
to the Chair." Wherefore government was a thing to hate, to injure--and
to escape from.

The first thing he had ever found worthy of respect and admiration in
this same government was one of its bulletins.

"Where'd you get this?"

"I asked for it, and the Bureau sent it."

"Oh! You've got a friend there!"

"No. The bulletin