CLEANING UP.
There is something to me very interesting in observing the manifestations of animal instinct—that unerring prompter which guides its willing disciple into the ever straight path, and shows him, with unfailing sagacity, the easiest and most correct method of accomplishing each necessary design.
But to enter here, upon a philosophical dissertation, respecting the nature and developments of instinct, is not my design, and I will now detain you with but one or two instances of it, which have fallen under my own observation.
One warm day in the early spring, I observed a spider, very busily engaged upon a dirty old web, which had for a long time, curtained a pane of my factory window. Where Madame Arachne had kept herself during the winter, was not in my power to ascertain; but she was in a very good condition, plump, spry, and full of energy. The activity of her movements awakened my curiosity, and I watched with much interest the commotion in the old dwelling, or rather slaughter house, for I doubted not that many a green head and blue bottle had there met an untimely end.
I soon found that madam was very laboriously engaged in that very necessary part of household exercises, called, cleaning up; and she had chosen precisely the season for her labors which all good housewives have by common consent appropriated to paint-cleaning, white-washing, &c. With much labor, and a prodigal expenditure of steps, she removed, one by one, the tiny bits of dirt, sand &c., &c., which had accumulated in this net during the winter; but it was not done, as I at first thought, by pushing and poking, and thrusting the intruders out, but by gradually destroying their location, as a western emigrant would say.—Whether this was done, as I at one time imagined, by devouring the fibre as she passed over it, or by winding it around some under part of her body, or whether she left it at the centre of the web, to which point she invariably returned after every peregrination to the outskirts, I could not satisfy myself. It was to me a cause of great marvel, and awakened my perceptive as well as reflective faculties from a long winter nap.
To the first theory there was no objection, excepting that I had never heard of its being done; but then it might be so, and in this case I had discovered what had escaped the observation of all preceding naturalists. To the second there was this objection, that when I occasionally caught a front view of "my lady," she showed no distaff, upon which she might have re-wound her unravelled thread. The third suggestion was also objectionable, because, though the centre looked somewhat thicker, or I surmised that it did, yet it was not so much so as it must have been, had it been the depot of the whole concern.
Of one thing I was at length assured—that there was to be an entire demolition of the whole fabric, with the exception of the main beams, (or sleepers, I think is the technical term,) which remained as usual, when all else had been removed. Then I went away for the night, and when I returned the next morning, expecting to behold a blank—a void, an evacuation of premises—a removal—a disappearance—a destruction most complete, without even a wreck left behind—lo! there was again the rebuilt mansion—the restored fabric, the reversed Penelopian labor: and madam was rejoicing like the patient man of Uz, when more than he had lost was restored to him.