HORNETS.
BY BILL NYE.
Last fall I desired to add to my rare collection a large hornet's nest. I had an embalmed tarantula and her porcelain-lined nest, and I desired to add to these the gray and airy house of the hornet. I procured one of the large size, after cold weather, and hung it in my cabinet by a string. I forgot about it until spring. When warm weather came something reminded me of it; I think it was a hornet. He jogged my memory in some way, and called my attention to it. Memory is not located where I thought it was. It seemed as though when ever he touched me he awakened a memory,—a warm memory, with a red place all around it.
Then some more hornets came, and began to rake up old personalities. I remember that one of them lit on my upper lip. He thought it was a rosebud. When he went away it looked like a gladiolus bulb. I wrapped a wet sheet around it to take out the warmth and reduce the swelling, so that I could go through the folding doors, and tell my wife about it. Hornets lit all over me, and walked around on my person. I did not dare to scrape them off, because they were so sensitive. You have to be very guarded in your conduct toward a hornet.
I remember once while I was watching the busy little hornet gathering honey and June-bugs from the bosom of a rose, years ago, I stirred him up with a club, more as a practical joke than anything, and he came and lit in my sunny hair;—that was when I wore my own hair—and he walked around through my gleaming tresses quite a while, making tracks as large as a water-melon all over my head. If he hadn't run out of tracks my head would have looked like a load of summer squashes. I remember I had to thump my head against the smoke-house in order to smash him; and I had to comb him out with a fine comb, and wear a waste-paper basket two weeks for a hat. Much has been said of the hornet; but he has an odd, quaint way after all, that is forever new.