Judy, March 15, 1876.
[Published when the mania for Spelling Bees was at its height.]
Chap. I.—On Industry.
With what singular persistency of purpose does that diminutive and laborious creature, the Bee, turn to account every minute of sunshine! The construction of her cell is a marvel of insect architecture; and if you were to attempt to spread wax with the same neatness and regularity, you would no doubt fail in the most ignominious manner. At least, I know I should; for I was only the other day sealing a letter when I burned my fingers dreadfully. I am aware that bee’s-wax is not sealing-wax; but still if I had used bee’s-wax to fasten my envelope, I daresay I should have made just as bad a mess of it, or worse. Then again, look how the Bee labours to store those octagonal chambers with the saccharine food she is all the day gathering from roses, tulips, candytuft, pelargoniums, pansies, pinks, hollyhocks, fuchsias, heliotropes, marigolds, dahlias, begonias, lupines, lilies, daffydowndillies, and, in short, every opening flower. I can’t help thinking that if the whole of one’s time was passed in books or work, or even healthy athletic pastimes, such, for example, as hop-scotch, dominoes, tossing the caber, knurr and spell, coddams, cricket, rounders, peg-top, prisoner’s-base, noughts-and-crosses, Aunt Sally, cribbage, nine-pins, Indian clubs, fly-the-garter, boxing, balancing tobacco-pipes on the tip of one’s nose, skimming half-pence at cats or attic windows, turning Catharine wheels in the road, or putting the stone, we might haply give as good an account of every day as our little friend the Bee could do, if so required. (Since the foregoing was committed to manuscript, I have met with some similar ideas in verse, by a Dr. What’s-his-name. I do not, however, think it necessary or desirable to cancel my own original reflections on a subject which, after all, is quite open to anybody.)
Punch.
Dr. Watts on Asthma.
(Vide Advertisement.)
How doth the little busy wheeze
Augment from hour to hour,