Madame Butterfly

“ My soul always craved colour, and more brilliancy could be found on one butterfly wing than on many flower faces. I liked to slip along the bloom-bordered walks of that garden and stand spell-bound, watching a black velvet butterfly, which trailed wings painted in white, red, and green, as it clambered over a clump of sweet-williams, and indeed, the flowers appeared plain compared with it! Butterflies have changed their habits since then. They fly so high! ”

“ If the butterfly was worth while he would follow till it fell to his net or daylight withdrew its support. Never he lost patience, never his smile faltered, never his mild spectacled eyes wavered. He was a savant by nature; he was a secret agent by choice. Who knows anything about rare butterflies appreciates the peril of the pursuit; one never picks the going and often stumbles. ”

“ The general trend of the music gets brisker at the entry of Butterfly and her girl friends. Butterfly's first song, a beautiful "largo," in which she tells of her approaching happy state, is skilfully blended with the sopranos of the chorus, and ends with a high D flat for the soloist. The procession and arrival of Butterfly's relations give an opportunity for some humour in the music, which is quaint and characteristic, and brings in a clever theme for the bassoons. ”

“ Just like flying flowers!"
"Ah! you are like all amateurs, Beatrice." Doctor Raymond shook his head gravely. "They are taken by the beauty of the butterfly, and so confine themselves to the imago state entirely. Whereas, to know the insect thoroughly, one should study it from the egg through all its stages to the perfected form. But you are not alone in it, my daughter. There are many men of wealth who make collections of the butterfly, as they do of gems and other things. They, too, care only for the perfected insect. In your case, you are young, and may be taught the proper manner of study. ”

“ THE BUTTERFLY.
A butterfly bask'd on a baby's grave,
Where a lily had chanced to grow:
"Why art thou here, with thy gaudy die,
When she of the blue and sparkling eye,
Must sleep in the churchyard low?" ”

“ Bees must make honey. They are too homely to do anything else, while butterflies—"
"Speaking of butterflies," interrupted Adele quickly. "There is one just about to light on your head."
"What kind is it?" queried Beatrice holding her head very still, and speaking anxiously. "I hope it isn't a cabbage butterfly. I shouldn't like to think that even a butterfly would take my head for a cabbage."
"It's yellow and black, Bee. Is that the cabbage butterfly? I don't know as much about such things as you do."
"The cabbage butterfly is white. Has it settled yet?" ”

“ The managers are usually willing and glad to bring out novelties if the public can be found to appreciate them. Madama Butterfly is a novelty, but it leaped into immediate and enormous appreciation. Would that we could find a number like it! Madama Butterfly's success has been largely due to the fact that the work bears the direct evidences of inspiration. I was with Puccini in London when he saw for the first time John Luther Long's story, dramatized by a Belasco, produced in the form of a one-act play. ”

“ Strong light has always an enlivening effect on creatures, whether human or otherwise. It cheered up the guests of Mrs Butterfly so much that they gave vent to an irresistible cheer; called for the music; and went on to dancing with more zest and energy than ever, insomuch that the attendant Glow-worms smiled to each other and nodded their heads. ”

“ A butterfly, especially a large butterfly, rarely bothers with these low-growing herbs, though each has its own delicious fragrance—and a butterfly’s scent is keen. So my black white admiral alternately danced and soared on down through the richly perfumed areas of the wood while I plunged eagerly after, glissading the needle-carpeted slope, making station from trunk to trunk lest a too headlong flight plunge me to oblivion in what I knew was at the foot of the hill. ”

“ Because the Swallow Tail is one of the largest kinds of butterflies in our whole territory, I knew Pop would be especially tickled if I could catch one for our collection, so I quick circled the house to the tool shed, swished in, swooped up Pop’s butterfly net—and in a jiffy later was out by the orchard fence where the most beautiful butterfly I had ever seen was acting like the nectar of that big Bull Thistle blossom was about the sweetest thing in the world to eat. ”

“ Butterfly," said the Rose, "the Lilac is not to blame, and the day is all the more charming for being a little later." [Pg 223]
"It is not the day that is so charming," said the Butterfly with a smirk. "But we have a few calls yet to make—seventy-five or a hundred, say. Come, Moth. Au revoir, Mademoiselle," and they fluttered off. "Did you see her blush, Moth, when I said that about the day not being so charming?" said the Butterfly. "That's what they like. Halloa! there goes that simpleton of a Humming-Bird. He thinks he's got the gayest coat in the Garden. ”

“ While Frank and Jimmy did this, Dick took his butterfly net, and went after an orange-tip butterfly, which he saw flying past. This butterfly is one of the first which makes its appearance in the spring, and it is one of the prettiest. It looks as if a bunch of red and white rose petals had taken to themselves wings and fled. It is a small butterfly, having an orange-red tip on the ends of its forewings. The male only has this ornament. The female has only a greyish black tip. The under surface of the wings of this pretty insect is no less beautiful than the upper. ”

“ There are people who believe they can see a butterfly quite accurately when they have fastened it with a pin on paper, which is as foolish as it is cruel, for a fixed and quiet insect is a butterfly no longer. It must be seen while it flutters among the flowers, and the Parieienne must not be studied in her domestic life, where she is pinned down, but in the salon, at soirees and balls, where she flies freely with the wings of embroidered gauze and silk among the flashing crystal crowns of delight and gaiety! ”

“ After an amusing scene of greeting and introduction comes the marriage ceremony and its attendant festivities, which are interrupted by the arrival of Butterfly's uncle. This venerable person, who is a priest in a neighbouring temple, has discovered that Butterfly has renounced her own religion and adopted that of her 'husband.' He pronounces the most portentous maledictions upon her and is bundled out by Pinkerton. The act ends with a love-duet of extraordinary beauty, breathing tenderness and passion in strains which seem to embody all the charm and mystery of the perfumed eastern night. ”

“ Indeed, one of our most splendid butterflies is the Anosia plexippus, otherwise known as the milkweed butterfly, rightly named also the monarch. Every boy who knows the country in summer knows him by his rich, red coloration, his strong, black-bordered wings with their black veins. Every bird knows him too and lets him alone. On the first median nervule of the hind wings of the butterfly is a scent bag whence he dispenses an odor so disagreeable to the bird who would eat him that he goes free, and is not afterward troubled. ”

“ I was hunting butterflies, and it was always a good introduction with which to go to anyone who was watching me with suspicion. Quite frankly, with my sketch-book in hand, I would ask innocently whether he had seen such-and-such a butterfly in the neighbourhood, as I was anxious to catch one. Ninety-nine out of a hundred did not know one butterfly from another—any more than I do—so one was on fairly safe ground in that way, and they thoroughly sympathised with the mad Englishman who was hunting these insects. ”

“ Hence these composite flowers are great favourites with all insects whose suckers are long enough to reach the bottom of their slender tubes.
The butterfly's view of life is doubtless on the whole a cheerful one. Yet his existence must be something so nearly mechanical that we probably overrate the amount of enjoyment which he derives from flitting about so airily among the flowers, and passing his days in the unbroken amusement of sucking liquid honey. Subjectively viewed, the butterfly is not a high order of insect ”

“ The female is brownish, tinged with violet towards the base; the hind wings have black spots on the outer margin, and some of these are inwardly edged with orange; the tails are slightly longer than those of the male.
All the available information concerning the occurrence of this species in England has already been given. No doubt the localities from which specimens were recorded have been closely investigated during the past twenty years, but no further captures of this butterfly have been recorded. ”

“ CHAPTER III THE ROSE, THE LILY, AND THE VIOLET; OR, HOW DIFFERENT METHODS APPEAL TO DIFFERENT WOMEN
The man butterfly is the most dangerous member of society. He is generally handsome, amiable, persuasive, and witty. He may be in succession cheerful, light-hearted, poetical, and sentimental.
If he comes to the rose, he says to her in his sweetest voice: 'You are beautiful, and I love you tenderly, ardently. I feel I can devote my whole life to you. ”

“ Her hair was still loose and flying, but the girl felt that she could not stay in the house. She must get somewhere where she could be alone. Beyond the Medulla residence was a deep wood, and out into the road went Beatrice, intending to reach its cool recesses. The warm sunshine had brought out clouds of butterflies. Small white ones sported like fragile flower petals in the bright rays. Silvery winged fritillaries sailed hither and thither among the red clover blossoms. A Monarch rose from a stalk of milkweed, and winged its stately flight just ahead of her. ”

“ LOVE AND THE BUTTERFLY.
I heard a merry voice one day
And glancing at my side,
Fair Love, all breathless, flushed with play,
A butterfly did ride.
"Whither away, oh sportive boy?"
I asked, he tossed his head ”

“ Butterflies, as a rule, do not appear to be at all influenced by an eye for the picturesque and romantic in the choice of their favourite haunts. Often have I been disappointed in this way, finding a delicious spot, basking in sunshine, and bedight with all manner of flowers such as a butterfly loves, yet with scarcely a stray butterfly to enliven it; while, on the other hand, a piece of the most unpromising flat waste land will be all alive with insect beauty. ”

“ At night, and during rainy days, butterflies hide, as they do in cold weather. They seldom fly abroad before nine in the morning. Between four and five in the afternoon they begin to steal off to bed. They are out in full force in those bright, hot noon hours, when the flowers are at their best. Happy butterfly, he flits about in the sun and drinks honey all the time of roses! ”

“ From the earliest ages, the Butterfly appears to have attracted the admiration of mankind; and we find it celebrated by their poets as figurative of gaiety and pleasure, and by their sages as an emblem of the human soul. ”

“ He was a butterfly of fifty-seven—a butterfly that found it necessary to touch up with artificial powders the ravages of years upon the delicate, downy bloom of youth—a butterfly whose wings had now and again been singed by contact with a harmful flame—whose still shapely body was now and again bent with rheumatism. Surely the rheumatic butterfly is the most wretched of insects! ”

“ A butterfly precedes us on our path and alights under our eyes, but when we come up it takes wing again, and comes down a little farther and begins all over again; and we smile at the butterfly that thinks of us. ”

“ While the poet draws from the butterfly many a pleasant similitude, and the moralist many a solemn teaching, the artist (who should be poet and moralist too) dwells upon these beings with fondest delight, finding in them images of joy and life when seen at large in the landscape, and rich stores of colour-lessons when studied at home in the cabinet.
The owners of many a name great in the arts have been enthusiastic collectors of butterflies. ”

“ As a general rule, the female butterfly is of dull and inconspicuous colours, even when the male is most gorgeously arrayed; but when the species is protected from attack by a disagreeable odour, as in the Heliconidæ, Danaidæ and Acrœidæ, both sexes display the same or equally brilliant hues. ”

“ What makes you like them?"
"They are so beautiful, Percival, for one thing. Then my father likes them. They are his specialty."
Percival gave a cry of delight as they entered the laboratory, and some butterflies rose from the thistles upon which they were resting. Like autumn leaves released from their moorings they floated about, brilliant bits of color. Soaring, curving, dropping into the depths of the corners of the room, the butterflies rose and fell, rose and circled higher, higher, up to the very ceiling ”

“ Even as the imago bursts from its chrysalis and, throwing aside the bonds that held it a lowly creeping thing to earth, mounts upward on gauzy wings, so the soul casts off its earth-bound body at length and also mounts upward on wings of hope. The symbol of the butterfly is found on all their tombs and monuments. ”

“ For some time she observed a great yellow butterfly, which was opening and closing its wings very slowly on a little flat stone.
"What is it to be in love?" she demanded, after a long silence; each word as it came into being seemed to shove itself out into an unknown sea. Hypnotised by the wings of the butterfly, and awed by the discovery of a terrible possibility in life, she sat for some time longer. When the butterfly flew away, she rose, and with her two books beneath her arm returned home again, much as a soldier prepared for battle. ”