“Why can’t you trim it when you see it runnin’ up that way?” she demanded querulously, poking at the lopsided and deeply charred wick with a sliver obtained from the side of the wood-box.
Her ministrations were not very successful, however, for when the chimney was replaced it ran up on the other side, and in the end her daughter had to prosecute a search for the scissors and cut the wick properly. As they worked over the ill-smelling light, Albert, the youngest of the three children of the household, burst into the kitchen crying excitedly:
“Ma, did you know that th’ flax was all whipped out of th’ pods on to the ground?”
Mrs. Farnshaw, who had received the lamp from her daughter’s hand, let it fall on the edge of an upturned plate in her excitement, and then, seeing what she had done, fumbled blindly in a terrified effort to right it before it should go over. The cracked chimney fell from its moorings, and, striking a teacup, spattered broken glass over the table like hailstones. The entire family scrambled to save the lamp itself from a similar fate and were plunged into darkness by the girl blowing out its flame to save an explosion.
The excitement of the moment served, temporarily, to lessen the blow of Albert’s announcement, but by the time “a dip” had been constructed the full weight of the disaster had fallen upon the defeated and despairing woman, and to protect her from the taunts of the head of the house, Lizzie induced her to go to bed, where she sobbed throughout the night.
The next day was hot and windy. The grasshoppers, unable to fly in a strong wind, clung to the weeds, to the dry grass, the stripped branches of the half-grown trees, to the cattle and hogs upon which they happened to alight, and even to people themselves, unless brushed off.
Lizzie took the cattle out to the usual grazing ground, but there was no Luther to help, and the grasshoppers made the lives of the restless animals so unendurable that in real alarm, lest they run away again, she took them home, preferring her father’s wrath to the experience of getting them back if they should get beyond her control. Fortune favoured her. Unable to endure the demonstrations of grief at home, her father had taken himself to a distant neighbour’s to discuss the “plague of locusts.”
The wind blew a gale throughout the day, sweeping remorselessly over the unobstructed hillsides. Unable to fly, the helpless insects hugged the earth while the gale tore over the Kansas prairies with a fearful velocity. With feminine instinct, every female grasshopper burrowed into the dry earth, making a hole which would receive almost her entire body back of her wings and legs. The spring sod, half rotted and loosened from the grass roots, furnished the best lodgment. In each hole, as deep down as her body could reach, her pouch of eggs was deposited.
No attempt was made to cover the hole, and by night the sod presented a honeycombed appearance never before seen by the oldest settlers. Having performed nature’s functions, and provided for the propagation of their kind, the lately fecund grasshoppers were hungry when the act was over. Not a spear of anything green was left. The travel-worn horde had devoured everything in sight the day before. Evening closed in upon a restless and excited swarm of starving insects, but they were unable to fly at night or while the wind was blowing.
It was necessary to find food; hunger’s pangs may not be suffered long by creatures whose active life is numbered in weeks. The high wind had cooled the air and made the locusts stupid and sleepy, but when the next morning the wind had fallen, and the sun had warmed their bodies, as fast as they were able all were on the wing, headed for the north. The air was calm, and by ten o’clock they were away in swarms, leaving ruin and desolation to show that they had sojourned in the land.