All this time, however, the dog continued at his post. At length, when the search was through, and nothing found, the barber requested the people to leave his shop, which they did. Now, coming to the door, he began to assure the people of his innocence. At this moment the dog descried him. In an instant he sprang and caught him by the throat. Persons flew to his assistance, and, at the hazard of their lives, rescued him from the grasp of the dog, who seemed urged on with indescribable madness and fury.
What could this mean? Was the dog really mad, or had the barber secretly made way with his master? One opinion only prevailed. There had in some way been foul play, and the dog was only acting out the sagacity which the God of nature had given him. It was agreed that the dog should have his liberty and be allowed to pursue the course he pleased.
The crowd fell back, the doors were opened, and the dog let loose. He sprang to the threshold, and entering the shop, smelled his way down a pair of stairs into a dark cellar, which he filled with his howlings.
The noise of the dog was heard without. Several persons entered the shop—lights were procured, and on searching the cellar, a door was found which communicated with the cellar of the adjoining house. Information was immediately given to the people above. They forthwith surrounded the house. That cellar was also searched, and there was found the murdered remains of the unfortunate stranger. On his trial, the barber confessed his guilt.
The World within a Plant.
“The fragrance of a carnation,” says a fine writer, “led me to enjoy it frequently and near.” While inhaling the powerful sweet, I heard an extremely soft, but agreeable murmuring sound. It was easy to know that some animal, within the covert, must be the musician, and that the little noise must come from some little body suited to produce it. I am furnished with apparatus of a thousand kinds for close observation. I instantly distended the lower part of the flower, and placing it in a full light, could discover troops of little insects, frisking and capering with wild jollity among the narrow pedestals that supported its leaves, and the little threads that occupied its centre. I was not cruel enough to pull out any one of them, but adapting a microscope to take in, at one view, the whole base of the flower, I gave myself an opportunity of contemplating what they were about, and this for many days together, without giving them the least disturbance.
Under the microscope, the base of the flower extended itself to a large plain; the slender stems of the leaves became trunks of so many stately cedars; the threads in the middle seemed columns of massy structure, supporting at the top their several ornaments; and the narrow places between were enlarged into walks, parterres and terraces.
On the polished bottom of these, brighter than Parian marble, walked in pairs, alone or in large companies, the winged inhabitants; these, from little dusky flies, for such only the naked eye would have shown them, were raised to glorious glittering animals, stained with living purple and with a glossy gold, that would have made all the labors of the loom contemptible in the comparison.
I could, at leisure, as they walked together, admire their elegant limbs, their velvet shoulders, and their silken wings; their backs vying with the empyrean in its hue; and their eyes, each formed of a thousand others, out-glittering the little planes on a brilliant. I could observe them here singling out their favorite females, courting them with the music of their buzzing wings, with little songs formed for their little organs, leading them from walk to walk among the perfumed shades, and pointing out to their taste the drop of liquid nectar, just bursting from some vein within the living trunk. Here were the perfumed groves, the more than myrtle shades, of the poet’s fancy realized; here the happy lovers spent their days in joyful dalliance; in the triumph of their little hearts, skipped after one another from stem to stem among the painted trees; or winged their short flight to the shadow of some broader leaf, to revel in the heights of all felicity.