Then, when he wanted a fly, nine times out of ten he could catch one with a sweep of the hand.  That was before the fly was charged with an amount of bad deeds, if they really were as bad as represented, which would have destroyed the human race long before the plagues of Egypt; or if not before the fly plague, would have caused that plague to leave no Egyptians alive to enjoy the later ones.  With these new opinions of the fly, began a crusade against him; and now the boys can’t have any more fun with him—­that is, only good boys can—­the kind that catch him with illusive traps, for a cent a hundred.  The other kind of boys may occasionally be sports enough to hunt him with the swatter; but it’s pretty poor hunting:  for the game is so shy that generally before you get within reach of him, he is off:  so swatting him is difficult, while catching him by hand, as we boys used to, is virtually impossible.

Now for some questions profound enough to befit our pages. (I) Have only a select group of very alert and quick flies survived? or (II) Have the flies told each other that that big clumsy brute with only two legs to walk on, and two aborted ones which do all sorts of foolish things—­the brute with only one lens to an eye (though he sometimes puts a glass one over it) and a pitifully aborted proboscis—­the brute that has no wings, and can’t get ahead more than about once his own length in a second—­that this clumsy brute had at last got so jealous of the six legs, hundred-lensed eyes, proboscis, wings and speed of the fly, that he had started a new crusade against him, and must be specially avoided?

Then, after it is ascertained whether the timidity of the flies is because this story has been passed around among them, or only because men have already killed off all but the specially quick and timid ones; we hope our investigators may find an answer to the farther question:  (III) How, if a tenth of what some folks say against flies is true, the human race has so long survived?

To avoid misapprehension, it should be added that despite the availability, in our boyhood, of flies as playmates, we don’t like ’em, especially when they light on our hands to help us write articles for this REVIEW.

Setting Bounds to Laughter

That there is even a measure of personal liberty on the earth, is one of our most pointed proofs that the universe is governed by design.  For liberty is loved neither by the many nor by the few; its defense has always been unpopular in the extreme, and can be manfully undertaken only in an age of moral heroism.  The present is no heroic age, and hence our personal rights fall one by one, without defense, and apparently without regret.  The losses thus incurred must be left to future historians to weigh and to lament.  There is, however, one of our natural rights, now cruelly beset by its enemies, that is too precious to surrender to the threnodies of the future historians.  This is the right to laugh.