Cantharides

“ Generally they are no bigger than a two penny piece, or a groat at the biggest, with a bladder full of liquor on the top of them, which, if you open but a little, will come out whitish or of a lemon or straw colour.” “Besides a blain there is a thing you may call a blister, puffing up the skin, long like one’s finger in figure, like a blister raised with cantharides; and such usually die.” ”

“ Their diminutive size has doubtless caused them to be too much despised. It cannot however be doubted, that there must be a great number of them whose virtues are at least equal to those of the cantharides, and many others which are less acrid and less caustic might in many cases be taken internally, with less danger and a greater chance of success.”
157The early history of this insect is not well known. The female buries her eggs in the ground; the larvæ have a soft body of a yellowish white colour; they live in the earth, and feed on various roots. ”

“ Tinctura Cannabis (Tr. Cannab.) , Tincture of Cannabis, U.S.P. (Tinctura Cannabis Indicae, U.S.P. VIII) .—Cannabis (10%) in alcohol. Assayed biologically by producing incoordination in dogs. Absolute alcohol content about 90 per cent.
Dosage: 0.75 Cc. or 12 minims (U.S.P.) . Those physicians who prescribe tincture of cannabis should specify the biologically assayed preparation.
*Cantharis (Canthar.) , Cantharides, U.S.P. (Spanish Flies, Russian Flies) .—A beetle.
Action and Uses: Externally, rubefacient and vesicant. Internally, genito-urinary irritant, often producing serious nephritis. ”

“ Patou
[Gently withdrawing.] I will make believe I found nothing.
The Pheasant-hen
[Watching the day break.] He has not noticed that night is nearly over.
Chantecler
[Bending over the grasses which begin to stir about the dead bird.] Insect, where the body has fallen, be swift to come and open the earth. The funereal necrophaga are the only grave-diggers who never carry the dead elsewhere, believing that the least sad, and the most fitting tomb, is the very clay whereon one fell into the final sleep. [To the funeral insects, while the Nightingale begins gently to sink into the ground.] ”

“ When that great shadow falls, it is not the fine, strange Cocks we trust to keep off the bird of prey!
Chantecler
[Suddenly grown great of size, his wounds forgotten, stands in the midst of them, and in an authoritative tone.] Yes, close around me, all of you, all! [All, huddled in their feathers, their heads drawn in between their wings, press against him.]
The Pheasant-hen
Dear, brave, and gentle heart!
Chantecler
[The shadow sweeps over the crowd a second time. The Game Cock makes himself small. Chantecler alone remains standing, in the midst of a heap of ruffled, trembling feathers.] ”

“ From afar appeared the numerous pagodas of Canton, with their domes adorned with little gold bells. Our boat nosed her way into the crowded river, traversed by a perpetual scurry of launches, and we were at once surrounded by a flotilla of numerous sampans ornamented with golden devices. We were deafened by the screams and the dreadful noise. Canton is a veritable town of amphibians. There is not room enough on land for the two million inhabitants, who spend all their lives on the water in floating huts. ”

“ The Pheasant-hen
He is so beautiful that what he says almost seems possible!
Chantecler
[Talking toward the horizon.] Ha, Sun, I feel you just behind there, stirring—and I laugh with pride and joy amidst my scarlet wattles— [Rising on tiptoe suddenly, in a voice of startling loudness.] Cock-a-doodle-doo!
The Pheasant-hen
What great breath lifts his breast-feathers?
Chantecler
[Toward the east.] Obey!—I am the Earth, and I am Labour! My comb is the pattern of a forge fire, and the voice of the furrow rises to my throat! [Whispering mysteriously.] ”

“ I sympathise with the position of the English merchants at Canton. It is not a pleasant thing to live on the borders of a river, and not to have a distance of two miles for exercise. At all events it would not suit me, who am fond of exercise, and I should be most glad to see them in the course of being emancipated from that state of duress in which they are placed at Canton. One of my reasons for regretting that which is being done is, that it tends to retard indefinitely any such extension of the liberty of my countrymen. ”

“ Chantecler
The Glow-worms have lighted their small, green lamps. All that is good comes forth, while hate shrinks back to its lair. Now they that shall be eaten lay themselves down in the grass by the side of them that shall eat them. The Star of a sudden looks nearer to earth, and forsaking her web the Spider draws herself up toward your song, climbing by her own silken thread. ”

“ Chantecler
I am thrice stronger now than you. Black excites me, you see, as red excites the bull, and thrice I have stared at night in the form of a bird’s shadow!
The White Pile
[Driven to bay, against the hedge, prepares to use his razors.]
The Pheasant-hen
[Screaming.] Look out! He has two sharp razors at his heels, the beast!
Chantecler
I knew it!
The Cat
[From his tree, to the Game Cock.] Use your knives!
Patou
[Ready to spring from his wheelbarrow.] If he uses those, I ll strangle him, that’s all!
The Crowd
Oh!
Patou
I will! Howl you never so loud! ”

“ Knowing so little about it, Chantecler is convinced that the magic of his cock-a-doodle-doo! makes the sun rise every morning! The pearl of the poem is the scene in the second act, where Chantecler confides this marvellous secret to the gloriosa donna delta sua mente, the Hen-Pheasant, who has taken refuge in the poultry-yard. A pheasant sees more of the world than a cock, flies and rockets up in the sky, dwells in the forest, and therefore, half-sceptical, half-scandalised, she listens while Chantecler, manlike, expatiates on the necessity of his existence. ”

“ Canton is so old that even the native custodians of local tradition have lost count of the years since it was founded. Some of the ancient coolies crouching near the wharves and sunning their wrinkled skins look as if they might be able to tell the age of their city; but a whimsical question elicits only a request for alms, mumbled with a mouth which has lost its teeth, so that the owner meets with difficulty in chewing even the small portions of food needed to keep the spark of life aglow in his shaky body. ”

“ Indeed, Canterbury is a city of great memories.
Augustine was, of course, the monastery’s chief treasure, and next came the body of St Mildred which was given to the house by Canute. It must never be forgotten by those who would look at things mediæval with mediæval eyes, that in those days the dead were more powerful than the living; even kings humbled themselves before the bones of dead saints. ”

“ Thus fell Canonchet, the last great chief of the Narragansets. A man so noble and chivalric in his spirit that his life and death commanded the admiration of his worst enemies. They vainly imagined that some disembodied spirit of Greece or Rome had revisited the earth in the vast physical and mental proportions of Canonchet.
Forty years before, the friendship of his father, Miantonomo, and the qualified hostility he assumed towards Sassacus and the Pequots had saved the infant colonies from destruction. ”

“ The Blackbird
[Hastily.] Nothing! [He tries to get away.]
Chantecler
You wish to ape the sparrow of city streets! But his impudence is not a manner of prudence, an art of remaining vague, an elegant method of having no opinion. His eyes always express either wrath or delight. Do you care to know the secret by which the little beggar, with his “Chappie” and his “See” can steal away our hearts? It is that he is frank and fearless that he believes, that he loves, that the railings of a balcony where some child strews crumbs for him are the only cage he ever knew! ”

“ I cannot understand what we are fighting for, and why Sir John Bowring should think himself degraded by an interview with Governor Yeh at Howqua's packing-house. This is a topic worth nothing but a laugh.
But is this admission to Canton, for which we are fighting, of any use? Canton is a walled city, occupied by a native population, with streets eight feet wide. Would any Englishman ever dream of living in such a place? Does an Englishman live in the Turkish quarters of Constantinople? ”

“ Chantecler
You lie on the earth and sleep in the sun!
Patou
[With a pleased yap.] Aye!
Chantecler
We have ever had in common our love for those two things.
Patou
I am so fond of the sun that I howl at the moon. And so fond of the earth that I dig great holes and shove my nose in it!
Chantecler
I know! The gardener’s wife has her opinion of those holes.—But what are the dangers you discern? All lies quiet beneath the quiet sky. Nothing appears to be threatening my humble sunlit dominions.
The Old Hen
[Lifting the basket-lid with her head.] The egg looks like marble until it gets smashed! ”

“ Hardly is the trip through the heart of Canton begun when it is halted by the interruption of traffic on the street over which the coolies are proceeding, and by the now familiar clatter of gongs and the wail of oriental voices—some weak, some strong, some tearful, and some joyful. ”

“ But it is not history—not the story of dead events—that chiefly fascinates us in Canterbury, or, indeed, in any such city; it is the lives of the men who made that history, who took part in those events. Here, as we walk the streets, we think of Augustine, of Thomas, of the Black Prince, of many another; and of many great men of letters—Chaucer, Erasmus, Marlowe, Thackeray, Dickens, Stanley: the first painting for us the Canterbury of his own days, the last that of past times. ”

“ The first impression of Canton is one of noise, a fearful din rising and falling in a kind of cadence, and seeming to proceed largely from an immense flotilla of boats extending a long way, tied, in a majority of cases, seven and eight rows deep—craft of all kinds, sampans, junks, rice boats, freight, each with its quota of humanity, for this is a veritable floating city, with a life all its own, and almost wholly independent of the Canton proper which we were about to visit and which numbered a hundred thousand souls. ”

“ Nor would anyone have expected the world to have paid anything to a man who could sit through a whole day watching the opening bud of a new rose. Canterton was one of the family of the big, patient people, the men of the microscope and the laboratory, who discover great things quietly, and remain undiscovered by the apes who sit and gibber at a clown on a stage.
Canterton had picked up one of his pipes, when a maidservant appeared in one of the arches cut in the yew hedge. She sighted the man under the white umbrella and made her way towards him along one of the stone paths. ”

“ PHYSIC STREET—A CHINESE CROWD—A CANTONESE PICKPOCKET—BEGGARS AND BARBERS. Honest travellers, who have visited Canton, have related twenty times the endeavours they have made to enter the walled city, the dangers they have encountered and the semi-success they have met with. Semi-success is an expression which disguises a poor falsehood ”

“ Chantecler
All those Rabbits looking on make it a trifle—
The Pheasant-hen
[Suddenly flaps her wings; the frightened Rabbits start, on all sides white tails disappear into rabbit-holes. The Pheasant-hen coming back to Chantecler.] There! [They bill.] Do you love my forest?
Chantecler
I love it, for no sooner had I crossed its verdant border than I got back my song. Let us go to roost. I must sing very early to-morrow. ”

“ To successfully view Canton requires some urbanity, a wealth of patience, and a stomach not readily overthrown by gruesome and unusual sights. And, further, the visitor must never forget that his vision is looking back from one to two thousand years, and that the hordes of human beings congesting the labyrinth of streets not seven feet wide, speak of a great nation as it was, which to-day is the oldest living nation on earth. ”

“ Chantecler
She is distractingly lovely, so much is certain!
Patou
He is never going to fall in love with a woman dressed as a man!
The Blackbird
[Who has again hopped down from his cage.] I must go and tell the Guinea-hen that a golden bird has blown into town. She’ll have a fit! She will invite her! [Off.]
Chantecler
So you come to us from the East, like the Dawn?
The Pheasant-hen
My life has the picturesque disorder of a poem. If I came from the East, it was by way of Egypt. ”

“ Cock-a— [At this point the crowing of other Cocks ascends from the valley. Chantecler listens, then softly.] Hark! Do you hear them now?
The Pheasant-hen
Who dare—?
Chantecler
The other Cocks.
The Pheasant-hen
[Bending above the plain.] They are singing in the rosy light—
Chantecler
Yes, they believe in the light as soon as they see it.
The Pheasant-hen
They sing all in a haze of blue—
Chantecler
I sang in total blackness. My song rose from the cheerless shade, and was the first to rise. It is when Night prevails that it’s fine to believe in the Light! ”

“ Chantecler
[Running toward the moss.] Ah, no! No! Not without me! [The moss flushes red.] Ungrateful!
The Pheasant-hen
The horizon—
Chantecler
[Imploringly, to the horizon.] No!
The Pheasant-hen
—is glowing gold!
Chantecler
[Staggering.] Treachery!
The Pheasant-hen
One may be all in all to another heart, you see, one can be nothing to the sky!
Chantecler
[Swooning.] It is true!
Patou
[Returning, cheery and cordial.] Here I am! I have come to tell you that they are all mad over there, at the topsy-turvy farm, to have back the Cock who orders the return of Day! ”

“ I have already said that the populace of Canton is the most violent, the most stupid, and the most inconsistent in the whole universe; and I am going to give a proof of this. When the Chinese meet in the American garden, or in the narrow alleys of the factories, any beautiful child of the Saxon race with auburn hair and blue eyes, or any beautiful little boy as rosy as a cupid of Watteau, they crowd around these charming little creatures with benevolent curiosity ”