“Them’s the dooelists,” he went on, indicating two who, rearing on their hind legs, clashed tiny swords with all the fire and fury of Macbeth and Macduff.
“Here we have the original Tango Team,” he continued, showing a pair who went through the motions of the dance in time to a tiny musical box.
Then, with pardonable pride, he drew my attention to a separate case containing a well-made model of a little farm. “There!” he said, extending his grubby hand, “all run by the little critters.” And, sure enough, there were active little insects drawing ploughs up and down green furrows; others were hoeing with tremendous energy; others mowing with equal enthusiasm. Here, too, was a miniature threshing machine, turned by four black specks lying on their backs, with other frantic black specks feeding it, and an extra strenuous one forking away the straw.
As I expressed my admiration of their industry, the Professor, with growing gusto, dilated on the cleverness of his pets, and put them through their paces. There was a funeral, a chariot race, a merry-go-round, and some other contrivances no less ingenious. Lastly he showed me a glass case containing many black specks.
“Raw material. Them’s the wild ones I keep to take the place of the tame ones that dies. At first I have to put ’em in a bit of a glass box like a pill box, and turning on an axis same’s a little treadmill. That’s to break ’em of the jumping habit. Every time they jump—bing! they hit the glass hard, so by and by they quit. But they have to keep a-moving, because the box keeps going round. In a few days they’re broke into walk all right.”
“Most ingenious!”
“All my own notion. Since I started in the business, many’s the hundred I’ve broke in. I guess I know more about the little critters than any man living.”
It was with a view to tap a little of this knowledge that I invited the Professor to a near-by pub, and there, under the influence of sympathetic admiration and hot gin, he expanded confidentially.
“All of them insects you saw,” he informed me, “comes from Japan. They grow bigger over there, and more intelligent. I’ve experimented with nigh every kind, but them Jap ones is the best. And here I want to say that it’s only the females is any good. The males is mulish. Besides they’re smaller and weaker, and not so intelligent. Funny that, ain’t it. That’s an argyment for Woman’s Suffrage. No, the males is no good.”
“And how do you train them, Professor?” I queried.