le creature. But I must stay
my hand from it again; for here has one passed before my window that can
have no conscience. It is a great booby--six foot man-boy of about
nineteen years. He has just stalked by with his insect-catcher on his
shoulder; the fellow has been with his green net into the innocent
fields, to catch butterflies and other poor insects. Many an hour have I
seen you, Eusebius, with your head half-buried in the long blades of
grass and pleasant field-weeds, partially edged by the slanting and
pervading sunbeams, while the little stream has played its song of
varied gentleness, watching the little insect world, and the golden
beetles climbing up the long stalks, performing wondrous feats for your
and their own amusement--for your delight was to participate in all
their pleasures; and some would, with a familiarity that made you feel
akin to all about you, walk over the page of the book you were reading,
and look up, and pause, and trust their honest legs upon your hand,
confiding that there was one human creature that would not hurt them.
Think of those hours, my gentle friend, and consider the object for
which that wretch of a booby is out. How many of your playmates has he
stuck through with pins, upon which they are now writhing! And when the
wretch goes home murder-laden, his parents or guardians will greet him
as a most amiable and sweet youth, who wouldn't for the world misspend
his time as other boys do, but is ever on the search after knowledge;
and so they swagger and boast of his love of entomology. I'd rather my
children should grow up like cucumbers--more to belly than head--than
have these scientific curiosity-noddles upon their poles of bodies, that
haven't room for hearts, and look cold and cruel, like the pins they
stick through the poor moths and butterflies, and all innocent insects.
Good would it be to hear you lecture the parents of these heartless
bodies for their bringing up, and picture, in your eloquent manner, the
torments that devils may be doomed to inflict in the other world on the
cruel in this; and to fix them writhing upon their forks as they pin the
poor insects. What would they do but call you a wicked blasphemer, and
prate about the merciful goodness of their Maker, as if one Maker did
not make all creatures? Yet what do such as they know of mercy but the
name? These are they that kill conscience in the bud.

Men's bosoms are like their dwellings--mansions, magnificent a