“ To cleave the air, to traverse space, to view beneath our feet man-inhabited mountains and plains; to breathe the blue ether of the sky, in place of the foul exhalations of the earth; to fly like an arrow from place to place, bearing tidings of peace or war,—these are our pleasures and our duties. I go farther in one day than a man does in six days.”
“Well, sir,” I replied, a little emboldened, “you are a Bohemian bird.”
“True,” he said; “I have no country, and my knowledge is limited to these things—my wife, my little ones; and where my wife is, there is my country.” ”

“ Better rather to die of hunger, while we, by our self-denial, add a single green leaf to the laurel-crown that decks the brows of our country. We are placed here on God’s earth, not to destroy, but to build up His glorious works. Take this to heart, ye visionaries who seek to establish the edifice of peace on a foundation of vice and blood. However humble our lot, let us rather—like the coral insects who, by their toil, build up the loveliest islands of the world—seek to do our duty in our allotted spheres, that we may leave behind us an unsullied fame. ”

“ Pray do not set me down as a foolish toad, living on the pleasures of imagination. It is in such follies as these that I have found the chief joys of my life. The disinherited ones of earth must gather consolation where they can. The air was hushed, the flowers and grasses sparkled with dewy gems, the birds had sought their evening perches, and were singing each other to sleep. All around were crowds of little beings, pushing on to their homes, tired of the business of the day and covered with dust. Some one, doubtless, was waiting and watching for the return of each insect wanderer. ”

“ Hardly fifty feet from the scene of my fame, I still heard the clamour of the angry crowd. About to cross the road at a single bound, I was caught between the legs of some one, who, like myself, seemed to be fleeing from the fray. My speed was so rapid, and the shock so violent, that I rolled into the ditch, carrying the owner of the legs with me. My doom was sealed, I thought. Men are far too proud not to resent being brought low by a poor Hare. My life will be sacrificed! ”

“ What danger was there, after all, in the fact that an insect thought me pretty, and expressed his admiration? It cannot be too well impressed, upon all whom it may concern, that beauty must be appreciated; the public gaze is the sun, which warms it into bloom, and sustains its vitality; cold indifference first mars, and then destroys it. Our coquetry simply expresses a natural craving for being seen, a thoroughly honest and respectable ambition. ”

“ One would think from your way of putting it, that by stinting one’s self of food, one gets what riches cannot buy. Some wise cat will no doubt prove before long, that poverty is the cure for all evils. Seriously, do you believe that fortune impairs happiness? If that is your creed, become poor at once, ruin yourself! Nothing is easier than that, live by your teeth if you can. Tell me what you think of it. Complain of being unhappy, but not of being rich, for we who are poor are no strangers to misery. ”

“ Jarpeado came here at the request of the Government on a bed of dust, made up of millions of his father’s subjects, embalmed by the Indians of Gualaca, not one of the nymphs of Rubens, not one of Miéris’ pretty girls has been able to dispense with the mummies of this race. Yes, my child, whole populations deck the lips which smile upon or defy you from each canvas. How would you like the freak of some giant painter who would take generations of human beings on his palette, crushing them to produce the colours of an immense fresco? ”

“ I had not yet ventured to the theatre alone.
“Ladies,” cried the Bull-dog, “you have, I daresay, already guessed that the white hat shelters the clarionet. Ladies, stop for heaven’s sake!”
“Why? how? How dare you accost us in this manner; stand on one side, sir, stand on one side!” said my mother with a lofty air.
Before such a show of nobility the musician stammered, only taking off his hat. “It rains, ladies, and you have no umbrella, deign to accept mine.” ”

“ Apart from the public life in which you are the slave of fame, you may wish to have a private domestic life hidden away from the world, to which you may betake yourself when weary of triumph and tinsel. But where will you find a partner vain or humble enough to share your lot, to joyfully wear the ridiculous livery inflicted on him by your success? Who would be the husband of a great female? ”

“ My sympathy rendered me speechless, while the father was mute with grief, he whose breast but a moment before had been bursting with joyous song. Suddenly a dull noise sounded near, our heads turned to the quarter whence a new danger seemed to threaten us. Imagine our joy when, in place of danger, we beheld our oppressor felled to the earth by an unseen hand, and the lost one returning safe to the nest. The delight of thus meeting one whom we thought dead filled all our hearts, and caused us to feel as one in happiness. ”

“ Happy Nightingale, you sing because your heart is bursting with joy. You are indeed highly favoured, you have a wife and little ones which you sing to sleep on their pillow of moss. You have a full moon to cheer you, plenty to eat, and no journals to praise or condemn you. Rubini and Rosini are as nothing to you. You are equal to the one, and divine when compared with the other. I, sir, have wasted my life in pursuing the empty vanities of fame, while you have secured real happiness in the wood. ”

“ Nature has loaded me with her rarest gifts, charm of face, elegance of figure, and great capacity of stomach. Let me think how I may wisely use her gifts.
I belong to horizontal life, and must abandon myself to indolence. I have four rows of sharp teeth, I shall therefore eat others and endeavour to escape being eaten myself. I shall cultivate the art of enjoyment, and adopt the morals of good living—whatever they may be—and shun marriage. Why should I saddle myself with a wife to share my prey, when I myself can eat the whole, or with a pack of ungrateful children? ”

“ I cried, disgusted with my father’s injustice, “be it so, I will leave you—deliver you from the sight of this white tail you are constantly pulling. As my mother lays three times a year, you may yet have numerous black children to console your old age. I will seek a hiding-place for my misery; perchance some shady spout which shall afford flies or spiders to sustain my sad life. Adieu!”
“Please yourself,” replied my father, who seemed to enjoy the prospect of losing me; “you are no son of mine—in fact, you are no Blackbird.” ”

“ Bear. These scraps of paper are the tender links which bind me to the past, and recall the licence of poetic inspiration. Happy is he who dwells at home, and who has never drifted into doggerel!
“All I now require is to be left alone to the use of my natural instincts, which have ripened under affliction, and to the enjoyment of the attributes with which nature has endowed me. I have been long in discovering my true self. Now that I have found the rascal, I will keep watch over him, and prove to the world that my wandering life has not been wholly spent in pursuits of vanity. ”

“ He was handsome beyond description. When he entered the corolla of a flower, I trembled lest the contact with its petals should spoil his beauty. I was mad. Platonic love; for Nature permitted us only the ideal, impossible love of the poet, the dream of the artist. I loved this creature simply for his beauty.
I admired the blue Dragon-fly with his silken wings, as I watched him skimming over the grass at the close of the day. I had, indeed, an eye for everything beautiful, and above all, for my superb Drone.
One day I found him half drunk with honey, lying fast asleep in the heart of a lily ”

“ When we have performed our allotted tasks in life, and are unable to provide for ourselves, we die. Not so with men; they are doomed to cling to the last shreds of life when all its joy and lustre have gone, and live on as if overtaken by some fearful retribution. But here I touch upon a large and mysterious question, and being a modest Crow, I shall leave it, as I fold my wings to sleep, for the night is falling and the ink has dried on my quill. The twilight hour of love is passing, and the Nightingale is tuning his lute.—I have the honour to salute you. ”

“ It must not be thought, that by granting a rendezvous to this insect, I yielded to foolish sentiment. I simply did it to oblige him, because he rendered justice to my charms, and spoke ceaselessly about me.
When I reached home that evening, I suppose my face must have expressed more than usual disgust, for my musician stood looking at me for several minutes without uttering a single word, and then two large tears rolled down his cheeks; he was grotesque. Nothing is more dreadful than an ugly animal, who adds to his ugliness the horrors of grief. ”

“ It seems to me, in order to succeed in the pursuit of happiness you must prefer clouds to sunshine, rain to fair weather, grief to joy. You must possess nothing, and yet find yourself too rich, take all that is done as well done, all that is said as well said, believe nothing, and yet know everything. Dream while you are living, live in your dreams. After all when you feel really happy, have patience, and time will surely destroy the illusion. ”

“ Phantom-Crickets sang love-ditties in the daintiest retreats, while a choir of winged musicians chanted the praises of the prince, who stood unmoved by the seductive art of this witching band. The passion-imbued glance of the queen fell, shivered against the armour of Jarpeado’s true heart, where, enshrined in all its artless purity, he treasured the image of the fair Anna. The music ceased, and in a silvery voice the queen, radiant with an unearthly beauty, exclaimed—
“Jarpeado! Jarpeado! receive the homage of the fairy queen whose heart thou hast won.” ”

“ A Carrion-Crow, whom I met, pointed out the government of the ants as a suitable model, so you may understand how eager I was to study their system, and discover their secrets. On my way I fell in with scores of ants travelling for pleasure. They were all of them black and glossy, as if newly varnished, but utterly devoid of individuality, being all alike. After, indeed, one has seen a single ant, one knows all the others. They travel coated with a liquid which keeps them clean. Should one meet an ant in his mountains, on the water, or in his city-dwelling, his get-up is irreproachable. ”

“ Jules, all your science and all your charms will never tempt the prince to prove unfaithful. You, sir, shall never be capable of love such as his. A little less science and a trifle more common sense would have suggested keeping him among the dust of his defunct ancestors, where, perchance, he left his living partner, or will find another of red-royal blood.”
The professor and his pupil elated by this marvellous suggestion hastened to replace Jarpeado in the dust from which he had been taken.
Alas! sighed Anna, Jules loves me not, else he would have lingered with me to tell his love. ”

“ Brother, we know that there is a beginning, and alas! an end, to everything, and that all must die; we know, too, the sorrows of our life, the labour of gathering our food leaf by leaf; we know the toil that transforms a mulberry leaf into a shining silken robe; we know the dangers that beset our lives; and the doom of the silken shroud that at last imprisons and blights the dreams of our young lives; we know that to die is to cease to toil, death being the end of the silken thread which began with our birth—we know all this ”

“ We, the birds and brutes of creation, do naturally what costs you an almost superhuman effort. We have no need of moral and religious institutions to teach us how dutifully to fill our allotted spheres. Natural instinct is our teacher, and we obey its faintest whisperings. We have no schools of music, the arts, or sciences; for all that, the Nightingale’s notes are true and harmonious, and the comb of the Bee continues to be constructed with matchless beauty and precision. ”

“ I have heard of unfortunate Nightingales, who for long years together have poured forth the most sublime songs without ever rising from obscurity, or obtaining a wider fame than that embraced in their native woodland shade, and yet this Wolf, because he has committed a foul crime, saw his clumsy doggerel rapturously applauded. I know of some good animals who, though they have proved themselves heroes of virtue, have never got a single line from the public press. ”

“ Nowadays the charm of music consists in the agility of the performer’s hands, in the shaggy vegetable-looking growth of the insect who manipulates the sonorous tool. It is undeniable that the harmony and sweetness of instrumental music lies in the nervous appearance of the animal who wakes the articulation of his instrument, in the colour of his skin, roll of his eyes, and the curious manner in which he curves his spine round the violoncello. ”

“ These ant-neuters watch with pride the growth of the young lives, and the development of the instinct for war and conquest in the young brood; not alone the conquest of lands and races, but the mastery over the elements of nature that informs them how to brave the worst storms, and build their wonderful ant-hills. These nurses, although tender-hearted, are proud, and will unflinchingly buckle the swords on to their favourites, and send them away to fight for fame, or die for their country. ”

“ Only miserable workers, makers of honey, moulders of wax, and neuter nurses to the children of those magnificent idlers who spend their days in sleeping in the heart of flowers, and dreaming that they hear the silvery tones of the queen’s voice calling them. I own myself ashamed of my humble, laborious calling. How could he love such a simple drudge? Were I even a Wasp, scouring lanes and hedgerows, and annoying wayfarers—careless, coquettish, unkind—always armed, offensive and useless; perhaps then he might love me. Is not fear the beginning of love? ”

“ Marmus, such was my master’s name, could not avoid contemplating the throng of depraved beasts to which I was added. A monkey in marquis furbelows, plumed head-dress, and gold waistband; quick as gunpowder, was flirting with a military hero of popular burlesque; an old rabbit, well up in his exercises; an intelligent poodle of modern dramatic fame spoke of the capriciousness of the public to an old ape seated on his troubadour’s hat; a group of grey mice were admiring a cat taught to respect canaries, and engaged in conversation with a marmot. ”

“ For all that, if I can be of any service to you I am heartily at your disposal.”
“You, sir, can serve me,” I replied, “for at this moment I too feel something of the poetic fire of which you speak, although, unlike yourself, laying no claims to poetic fame. I am naturally endowed with a voice and song which together violate all the old rules of art.”
“I myself have forgotten the rules. Genius may not be fettered, her flights are far beyond all that is stiff and formal in schools of art.” ”