--All this last page or so, you readily understand, has been my private
talk with you, the Reader. The cue of the conversation which I
interrupted by this digression is to be found in the words "a good
motto;" from which I begin my account of the visit again.
--Do you receive many visitors,--I mean vertebrates, not articulates?
--said the Master.
I thought this question might perhaps bring il disiato riso, the
long-wished-for smile, but the Scarabee interpreted it in the simplest
zoological sense, and neglected its hint of playfulness with the most
absolute unconsciousness, apparently, of anything not entirely serious
and literal.
--You mean friends, I suppose,--he answered.--I have correspondents, but
I have no friends except this spider. I live alone, except when I go to
my subsection meetings; I get a box of insects now and then, and send a
few beetles to coleopterists in other entomological districts; but
science is exacting, and a man that wants to leave his record has not
much time for friendship. There is no great chance either for making
friends among naturalists. People that are at work on different things
do not care a great deal for each other's specialties, and people that
work on the same thing are always afraid lest one should get ahead of the
other, or steal some of his ideas before he has made them public.
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