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THE FAMOUS BUG FAMILY.

Before leaving the class of aurocorida or air-bugs, we may well glance at the remarkable fulgora or lantern fly (figure 17). It is of tropical habit and a native of South America. In shape it is very curious, mainly because of the very large and elongated head. Its colors are yellow, greenish and black. Among the most attractive of its many strange features is the power of emitting light, perhaps in a way analogous to the production of phosphorescence by our fire-flies and glow-worms. Figuier thus refers to the effect of the lantern flies: "What a marvellous spectacle must the rich valleys of Guiana present, when in the stillness of the night, the air is filled with living torches; when, the fulgore flying about in space, the flashes of fire cross each other, go out, and blaze up again; shine brightly, and then die out, and present, on a calm evening, the appearance of those lightning flashes which are usually seen only in the midst of a tempest !"

Among the hydrocorida or water-bugs we may pause to consider but two ex

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ditches. It is an active voracious creature; eagerly seizing and devouring any aquatic animals of small size, and as a

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I see him before me.

dare not intrude upon his isolation,

It's old Ivan, the Russian cobbler of hedged about by the invisible barrier of the Thirteenth Ward.

Well, I know him as well as the shoes he patched for me, and the boots he soled.

There he is sitting, or rather nestling all the livelong day, in his little wooden shanty at the street corner, squatting on a worm-eaten tripod, as shaky as that of many an editor, before him a rude table with old-country tools of-say the times of his imperial namesake, the Cruel.

His garb has none of the ermine or mink of the Steppes; his raiments is tatters and rags. Deep furrows are crossing his face all over. Hardly seeing or recognizing anything through his timestained eye-glasses, bent over like an age-bowed and sapless tree, he keeps on toiling and toiling, moving to and fro his half-bared, bony arms.

When in the morning (not every morning, though the municipal contract calls for it) the sprinkling-cart driver comes along with his vehicle, the contents of which spurt through the open bung hole, and cries a hearty, "Good morning! Daddy," he awakens from his drowse and nods with speechless response. And when the rich grocer, on whose ground and charity the poor despised cobbler runs his little shop, opens his shutters and basks in the light of the half rotten oranges and the fragrance of the wilting vegetables, the humble tenant nods again his silent morning salutation and returns, like a snail into his shell, into the almost solemn tranquillity of his self-absorbing isolation; for he has fulfilled the duties of his homage. Now he is one with his awl again and his twine encompasses both his soul and that of his customer. His hands will tremble now and then, ever and anon the steel blue rings around his half-blind eyes will assume a deeper hue, and a pensive sadness enwraps the solitary toiler.

His is the best known personality in the street. Only the local contingent of the "Terrors of America" have as "holy a horror" of the uncouth foreigner as their youthful energies will permit; they

an unknown tragedy. Why, the mothers would use poor, harmless, old Ivan as the mothers of the Gracchi used the terrifying reminiscence of Hannibal: “If you won't mind I'll take you to Ivan," say they-and the lads and the lasses will "mind." And when two neighbors-the butcher on Cleveland avenue and the meat market man across the street are in red hot competitions coloric, the direst invective is, "May you fare as old Ivan," and that is a "poser." Indeed old Ivan is poor and miserable; but there were times when he was happy in spite of his poverty and his misery.

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A few years ago (before the electric street cars ran) he was a happy man. A few years ago he had his little Ivanovitch, his dear Ivanovitch. How he loved him, loved him above all the world! Whatever germs of affection could sprout in his almost petrified heart would blossom out of his warmed bosom for the little one. He would toil more than ever; for had he not his little Ivanovitch to feed and to clothe? And when all the toiling and patching and soling and pegging and sewing and stitching did not bring in enough for a meal for two, what then? Little Ivanovitch had to eat, had he not? And old Ivan, did he not feed on the ease and joy and rosy cheeks of the only living being the old cobbler loved, yea, knew? It was on a dun, nebulous morning-a day bleak as Ivan's whole life-day was destined to be that Ivanovitch was ushered into this world. Poor little thing! He could not help it, nor the sad fate of his mother going wrong, being lost and perishing. Could he? Thus our Ivanovitch grew up without maternal nursing or training. The street was his cradle, and there was enough rocking for the semi-waif. And the same street was to be his rocky coffin too. But wait a little while for that, it will come soon enough. There were two objects that Ivanovitch had enshrined, as his grandfather had the jewels of the Blessed Mother of Christ at Kasan; his father and his books. How

THE COBBLER'S NEW YEAR.

happy the dark-locked though unkempt lad was when one of his schoolmates loaned him a book. To read it? Oh, no. He would derive ecstatic joy from merely gazing at the large printed leaves. How delighted he would have been to know what they were telling.

But little chance he had to indulge in such raptures. Only nine years was his claim on a three-score-and-ten life lease when he had to face life's stern realities and harsh duties. It became his labor to take the mended footgear to the customers and then, when he had a few coppers given him, he was the happiest of humans. Did he buy candies or toys? Not he. In secret, when old Ivan was not looking, he would huddle around to the stocking, which served as a purse, and drop his few coppers into its, alack! too capacious depth.

"Why! What's the matter?" old Ivan would exclaim of an evening, when he'd find more coppers than his Crispin craft had brought him in through the day. "How's that!"

And Ivanovitch would keep the silence of a Sphinx and the goodness of an angel and "snicker," yes, snicker to himself in childish glee-for wasn't that a good trick, a precocious prank to play on his father? For the old man could not account for the discrepancy; in fact, he did not really know whether there was an unaccountable surplus or an unaccounted for deficit.

Thus-did Ivan ever forget it? the writer never did-Ivanovitch was just about to smuggle a few more coppers into the family treasury, unseen, as he thought, when Ivan happened to turn about and see the lad fumbling, as it appeared in the stocking. Thunder-struck, the grey-haired man fell back. Poor he was, he knew it, and almost got reconciled to that fact or condition. But that Ivanovitch, his only solace, hitherto, should turn out to be a thief! What an outraging culmination of mocking Fate! His Muscovite blood went boiling as in a seething caldron. Losing all control of himself, with bloodshot eye, rage in his uplifted arm, he rushed on the quivering lad. "Tell the truth!"

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Ivan, the cobbler, had his small private passion. We all have some passion. He was an ardent smoker. Smoke he must, though he did not touch his native vodki. To get enough to smoke on he would work an hour or two longer in the night. Yes, three hours. For tobacco brought in more profit to his big neighbor and landlord, the fat grocer with the gold watch and chain, than his cobbling brought Ivan. But in the cerulean cloudlets of his incinerated weed he'd see visions Elysian before him.

One morning (another dun and nebulous one) the old man had twirled another cigarette of his common weed and was sighing into the blue, wee cloud ringlets: "Oh, a little package of fine tobacco, that would be pleasure!"

Ivanovitch sat opposite his father. He said nothing; he never said anything unless he was asked directly. But he was inspired, as it were, to think; and he thought.

From that moment on he no longer deposited the coppers, that he gathered on his errands, in the old stocking. No, he was his own treasurer. Poor lad! he had an independent financial idea. He put his own coppers up by themselves, one by one, copper after copper. How long, how everlastingly, how almost eternally long it took him to gather, at last, a treasure of a dollar. A dollar! Why, a fortune! Now, let any one of his mates (neither schoolmates nor playmates, still less, had he) come to him; would he not step up, look proudly at them and ask: "Who are you? What do you want? Have you a dollar anyhow?"

But no mate came. So he started to execute his plan, for he feared he might lose his money (oh, the many heavy coppers!) or be tempted into squandering it for toys and knickknacks. On his

return home he was passing along Main street. Going along he took his time and a good look at the show windows, for he was on the search after something. Arrived at the dazzling display of a toy shop he was fascinated, rooted to the ground, almost entranced.

"Oh, the marbles, the dolls, the tin soldiers, the balls, the tops, the harps, how pretty! Just like the butcher's son's across the corner." Tears of tempting desire welled from his steel-blue eyes. But wasn't he out to get something for his father, on this New Year's Eve?

"Shame, Ivanovitch!" he said to his own abashed little self and he went to the corner where a big wooden Indian was swinging (imaginarily) an equally wooden tomahawk. There he bought two packages of fine, very fine tobacco, put them cautiously in an inside pocket of his only half-patched jacket that had never felt as warm as now, and ran, yes ran down home in one breath, so to speak; for mightn't a robber come and deprive him of his treasure?

And when he got home, he took his tin box, long held in readiness, put the tobacco into it and buried the whole in the backyard. "Only till to-morrow, till New Year's," he murmured in anticipatory glee over the morrow's surprise to his father, his savior and his summum bonum.

New Year's!

The bells tolled.

The sleigh-bells jingled.

What a golden brilliancy over the silver-white snow on the roofs of the rich and the walks of the poor!

Ivan and Ivanovitch had been to the only church where, although twelve days ahead of their national calendar, they could offer the humble worship of their devout souls on the opening of another year of grace. The old cobbler was mentally calculating how much his last year's savings would advance him in the year ushered in. Maybe he could rent a larger shop and take in a journeyman to assist in disposing of the increasing custom.

Ivanovitch, the little rogue, was almost smiling on his rosy lips that lent a

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The "noble" team of an aristocratic outfit had long turned around the next corner, leaving a bloody track behind, when old Ivan was still leaning, sobbing, crying, wailing over the maimed body of his Ivanovitch, his son, his family, his all, his hope, his love, his faith.

Mangled by a gilt turnout, in whose roadway the little waif had strayed in one unobserved second.

"Ivanovitch! Ivanski! Ivanutchi !" And other endearments, other heartrending cries came from the poor old man's blanched lips, the feverish dryness of which was relieved only by the moisture that trickled from the eyes whose light was going out, going out before his feet, in his grasp, under the merciless shadow of death.

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CROSS PEOPLE.

I see him again, this New Year's morning, many years after the terrible accident.

He is still there in the same old shanty, toiling and laboring, stitching and patching, sighing and nodding-but no longer smoking. But now and then he stops in his work, takes from the pocket of his breast (the one that a dear head lay bleeding and dying against) two packages of tobacco, "fine, Turkey tobacco." These he inspects musingly, yea lovingly all over, all around. He holds them to the light of the sun and to the dim ray of his candle. He kisses them and then puts them back with a reverential slowness and stillness that could not be surpassed, were he handling the precious relics in the jeweled shrine of the Blessed Mother at Kasan.

And when he sees horses he clenches his hands into furious fists and mumbles unintelligible words in the hoary stubble beard, which has been free of tobacco ashes or smoke since that New Year's morn on Main street. And no children dare come near him. If they approach, his face assumes hideous contortions and he grins as demented. A grin of sardonic hatred? Oh no, of love turned outside in, of honey curdled to gall. Ivanovitch is no longer. What! shall Ivan linger? And yet, this New Year's morn he is not quite crazy, he is not quite dead. Poor old cobbler! Leo Haefeli.

CROSS PEOPLE.

"I BELIEVE," exclaimed a bright woman one day, "that I would rather have a really wicked person in the house, if he would only be good-natured, than to live with the best one who was cross."

This was extreme, but any one who has ever endured the society of an irritable companion for many days will feel a sympathy with even this strong statement. Such a companion is a species of torture. It sometimes seems as though almost every duty were more forcibly impressed upon the young than the duty of amiability. In many quarters this virtue is absolutely at a disadvantage. The cross ones are likely to get a reputation for

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greater ability than the pleasant ones. "Fools," we are told, "are always amiable."

We plead for a reform, and so plead everybody who happened to be in a certain house in an inland town, where a handsome and fashionable young woman was stopping with an aunt, who had every claim upon her tenderest consideration.

"Are you going out to the cliff?" the young woman would demand of her aunt. "I don't know yet," the aunt would respond wearily.

"Oh dear, I wish you could ever make up your mind!" the niece would fret.

"But I must wait and see how I feel after my dinner," the invalid aunt would protest.

"If it wasn't that, it would be something else," the niece would exclaim, petulantly. "You're always waiting, always undecided. I get sick of it!"

The aunt bore her young charge's (or superintendent's) vagaries almost too sweetly; but the hateful little bicker and impudence of the latter were unendurable to the outside listeners, before whom she took no pains to control herself. Yet this young girl was a member of the church. She would not have lifted her hand against her aunt, yet she gave her daily worse insults than a physical blow.

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The blow a glove gives is but weak. Does the mark yet discolor the cheek? But when the heart suffers a blow Will the pain pass as soon, do you know ?" It is a woman that the poets are always giving praise for their ability. It was a woman to whom belonged those

"Sweet lips whereon perpetually did reign The summer calm of golden charity." But it is doubtful whether women are really so equable as men. Xantippe and poor Rip's wife are types of a very large class.

It is reasonable to expect that women should be less amiable than men. Emerson says, "All healthy things are sweettempered." It is only within a few years that women have begun, as a class, to take proper care of their health. Even now they are not expert in the art, and more than half our women are semi-in

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