"Who knows, Master Jack?"
"The ephemeride does not die so quickly as you think," said Becker; "it commences by living three years under water in the form of a maggot. It afterwards becomes amphibious, when it has a horny covering, on which the rudiments of wings may be observed. Then, four or five months after this first metamorphosis, generally in the month of August, it issues from its skin, almost as rapidly as we throw off a jacket; attached to the rejected skin are the teeth, lips, horns, and all the apparatus that the creature required as a water insect; then it is no sooner winged, gay, and beautiful, than, as you observe, it dies—hence it is called the day-fly, its existence being terminated by the shades of night."
"I was certain of it," said Willis.
"Certain of what?"
"That it died of grief at being on land. When one has been accustomed to the water, you see, under such circumstances life is not worth the having."
"The day-fly," continued Becker, "is an epitome of those men who spend a life-time hunting after wealth and glory, and who perish themselves at the moment they reach the pinnacle of their ambitious desires. Whence I conclude, my dear children, that there are nothing but beginnings and endings of unhappiness in this world, and that true felicity is only to be hoped for in another sphere."
"What a curious series of transformations! First an aquatic insect, next amphibious, then throwing away the organs for which it has no further use, and becoming provided with those suited to its new state!"
"Yes, my dear Fritz; and yet those complicated and beautiful operations of Nature have not prevented philosophers from asserting that the world resulted from floating atoms, which, by force of combination, and after an infinity of blind movements, conglomerate into plants, animals, men, heaven, and earth."
"I am only a plain sailor," said Willis "yet the eye of a worm teaches me more than these philosophers seem to have imagined in their philosophy."
"Such a system could only have originated in Bedlam or Charenton."