Cockroaches, like the Wise Men, originally lived in the East. They were at first far from hardy—wretched travelers, hating changes of climate. But when England began trading with the Orient, the cockroach grew venturesome, and began putting to sea as a stowaway. It was thus he reached England.
He settled down at first in her seaports. Remained there for years. People inland heard of him, or saw him if they went to the coast, but supposed themselves immune from his visits. Now he owns the whole island. And wherever the Englishman has journeyed, or settled, or trafficked, except perhaps on the ice-floes of Labrador, we now find the cockroach.
We all know his habits. He prefers to live in kitchens and bakeries. Eats all kinds of food. Eats shoes and the bindings of books. Also eats his own relatives. Any relative that isn't good and lively is at once eaten up.
You can tell the sexes apart (if you want to) by this: The males don't drag their stomachs on the ground the way the females do, and they have better wings. Their wings are not good enough to use much, but still, they have little ones.
The most surprising thing about roaches is that they live several years. Scientists say maybe five. Owing to this they get to know all of a family's ways, and can't be caught napping; they have plenty of time to study roach powders and learn to digest them. They dislike castor oil, though, and keep away from where it has been rubbed.
Cockroaches are intelligent beings. Their natures are human. They are not like other insects, any more than dogs are like other animals. I wish some man of science and sympathy would interpret their lives.
That book that I dream of on roaches: will it ever be written? Brown Beauty, or Only a Cockroach, by Mary Gook Twillee—a book that little children would read with wet eyes Sunday evenings. No, that sounds like a pamphlet from the Society for the Prevention of Stepping on Cockroaches. We want nothing humanitarian. Still less, a Work on the subject. We want a poet to do for the cockroach what Maeterlinck has done for the Bee.
If nobody else will, I shall probably have to do it myself.
Since boyhood (I shall begin) I have felt the injustice of men to the roach. Or not men, no; but women. Men are in this matter more tolerant, more live-and-let-live in their ways. But women have condemned the roach not only unheard, but unjudged. Not one of them has ever tried petting a roach to gain his affection. Not one of them has studied him or encouraged him to show his good side. Some cockroaches, for instance, are exceedingly playful and gay, but what chance have they to show this, when being stepped on, or chased with a broom? Suppose we had treated dogs this way; scared them; made fugitives of them!