His room is hung round
with cases of them, each impaled on a pin driven through him, something
as they used to bury suicides. These cases take the place for him of
pictures and all other ornaments. That Boy steals into his room
sometimes, and stares at them with great admiration, and has himself
undertaken to form a rival cabinet, chiefly consisting of flies, so far,
arranged in ranks superintended by an occasional spider.
The old Master, who is a bachelor, has a kindly feeling for this little
monkey, and those of his kind.
--I like children,--he said to me one day at table,--I like 'em, and I
respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the
world is done by them. Do you know they play the part in the household
which the king's jester, who very often had a mighty long head under his
cap and bells, used to play for a monarch? There 's no radical club like
a nest of little folks in a nursery. Did you ever watch a baby's
fingers? I have, often enough, though I never knew what it was to own
one.---The Master paused half a minute or so,--sighed,--perhaps at
thinking what he had missed in life,--looked up at me a little vacantly.
I saw what was the matter; he had lost the thread of his talk.
--Baby's fingers,--I intercalated.
-Yes, yes; did you ever see how they will poke those wonderful little
fingers of theirs into every fold and crack and crevice they can get at?
That is their first education, feeling their way into the solid facts of
the material world.
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