Monteiro Lobato

“ Up came a shivering ant, swathed in a cotton kerchief.
“What do you wish?” she said, examining the crestfallen beggar, covered with mud, and coughing, coughing. . .
“I came in search of shelter. The drizzle never stops, and I. . . .” ”

“ Result: the balm-cricket died there, frozen to death; and when spring returned, the world wore a sadder aspect. It was that, in the symphony of things, it missed the strident note of that balm-cricket that had died as a result of the ant’s miserliness. If the usurer had died instead, nobody would have missed her.
ARTISTS—poets, painters, musicians—are the balm-crickets of humanity.
↑ Of course the balm-cricket like the ant, introduced just below, had to be females, since, grammatically, cigarra, “balm-cricket,” and formiga, “ant,” are feminine.—The Editor. ”