" and "Suke there," as
constantly greeted our ears, kept our little establishment in a constant
commotion. At last, when she one morning made a plunge at the skirts of
my new broadcloth frock coat, and carried off one flap on her horns, my
patience gave out, and I determined to sell her.

As, however, I had made a good story of my misfortunes among my friends
and neighbors, and amused them with sundry whimsical accounts of my
various adventures in the cow-catching line, I found, when I came to
speak of selling, that there was a general coolness on the subject, and
nobody seemed disposed to be the recipient of my responsibilities. In
short, I was glad, at last, to get fifteen dollars for her, and
comforted myself with thinking that I had at least gained twenty-five
dollars worth of experience in the transaction, to say nothing of the
fine exercise.

I comforted my soul, however, the day after, by purchasing and bringing
home to my wife a fine swarm of bees.

"Your bee, now," says I, "is a really classical insect, and breathes of
Virgil and the Augustan age--and then she is a domestic, tranquil,
placid creature. How beautiful the murmuring of a hive near our
honeysuckle of a calm, summer evening! Then they are tranquilly and
peacefully amassing for us their stores of sweetness, while they lull us
with their murmurs. What a beautiful image of disinterested
benevolence!"

My wife declared that I was quite a poet, and the beehive was duly
installed near the flower plots, that the delicate creatures might have
the full benefit of the honeysuckle and mignonette. My spirits began to
rise. I bought three different treatises on the rearing of bees, and
also one or two new patterns of hives, and proposed to rear my bees on
the most approved model. I charged all the establishment to let me know
when there was any indication of an emigrating spirit, that I might be
ready to receive the new swarm into my patent mansion.

Accordingly, one afternoon, when I was deep in an article that I was
preparing for the North American Review, intelligence was brought me
that a swarm had risen. I was on the alert at once, and discovered, on
going out, that the provoking creatures had chosen the top of a tree
about thirty feet high to settle on. Now my books had carefully
instructed me just how to approach the swarm and cover them with a new
hive; but I had never contemplated the possibility of the swarm being,
like Haman's gallows, forty cubi