prise; much better, I am sure, than one's garments would if one were to try to wriggle out of them without using one's limbs. It folded back, it drew together, it finally became a little pellet or pack of cast-off linen that clung to the tail-end of the chrysalis. To effect the final detachment, and not lose the grip which this end seemed to have on the board beneath it, required a good deal of struggling, probably a full minute of convulsive effort before the little bundle of cast-off habiliments let go and dropped, a dark pellet the size of a small pea. Then our insect was at rest, and seemed slowly to con- 15 tract and stiffen. It had woven itself the silken loop to hold it to its support, and it had struggled out of its old skin on its own initiative or without being mothered or helped, as so many new-born creatures 20 are. I did not have the pleasure of seeing it spin the cord over the back which plays an important part in the process of transformation, mechanical part though it be; 25 but a few days later, through the patient and clear-seeing eyes of my friend, Miss Grace Humphrey, I witnessed this operation also. our breaths to see if it would start building operations there. But no. Up the window-ledge it wormed its way, and thence up and up, by the side of the win5 dow, leaving all the way along a silky thread, and constantly going back and forth with its head. 'The day after you left,' she wrote, we 30 found another caterpillar a few feet away from yours. It had already made its saddle-cord and shed its silken robe when we found it, but we watched it change from gray-green to - - not greenish-brown at all, 35 but a grayness matching the concrete of the house; for it was higher up than yours, on the ledge below the window, hanging from the ledge against the plaster wall. Its cord, too, apparently grew 40 thicker just at the ends, showing up more plainly for a bit; then like yours it dried up and more perfectly matched its background. In neither of them did the cord continue to look thicker. 45 The same day I found a third caterpillar under the pear-tree, the very same kind, black with a wide green stripe marking off each segment, and the rows of yellow buttons. I carried it on a leaf up 50 to the porch, where we put it under a glass bowl. But of course it thought that an unfavorable place for housing itself for the winter, and it would n't start, though we kept it there two days. At 55 noon, when freed, it climbed up the wall of the house rather near yours (so they were photographed together), and we held Mr. R knocked it down once to keep it in the sunlight in order to photograph it, and it immediately climbed up to the same spot, all the time leaving the white silk thread. It kept climbing up and up till I had to get on a chair to see it, and once I lost my balance and jumped down, jarring it so that I knocked it to the floor. But up it got, and climbed up, and spent the rest of the afternoon alternately wriggling about to find just the right place and making a silken background in one spot. The next day it was still on the window-ledge. About eleven o'clock it disappeared, and I hunted and hunted before I found it on the under side of the porch railing! It was busily making its network, but it made far less than either of the others, and most of the time it was staying quite still. The following day, about noon, it made its cord, anchoring that at one end, then at the other, and going back and forth to strengthen it. When the cord was ready, it put its head through (the cord was made ahead of it) and wriggled itself into the cord; it wriggled fully as hard as when yours got itself out of its striped cover. So slowly and carefully it made its way into place, being most careful not to strain the cord. We watched breathlessly. It pushed itself so far through that it was about half and half, and then it had to wriggle backward till its head and a third of its body was through, and two thirds not through; and wriggling back took far greater care than forward. It stayed just that way, all huddled up for nearly four days, when about eight o'clock in the morning it split and divested itself of its robe. It is matching the brown woodwork like yours, and there all three are!' The incomparable French natural historian and felicitous writer Henri Fabre has witnessed what I never have: he has seen the caterpillar build its case, or cocoon. In the instance which he describes it was the small grub of one of the Psyches. The first thing the creature did was to collect bits of felt or pith from the 5 cast-off garment of its mother. These it tied together with a thread of its own silk, forming a band, or girdle, which it put around its own body, uniting the ends. This ring was the start and foundation of the sack in which it was to incase itself. The band was placed well forward, so that the insect could reach its edge by bending its head up and down and around in all directions. Then it proceeded to widen 10 the girdle by attaching particles of down to its edges. As the garment grew toward its head, the weaver crept forward in it, thus causing it to cover more and more of its body till in a few hours it covered all 15 of it, and the sack was complete, a very simple process, and, it would seem, the only possible one. The head, with the flexible neck that allowed it to swing through the circle, was the loom that did 20 the weaving, the thread issuing from the spinneret on the lip. Did the silk issue from the other end of the body, as we are likely to think it does, the feat would be impossible. I suppose a woman might 25 knit herself into her sweater in the same way by holding the ball of yarn in her. bosom and turning the web around and pulling it down instead of turning her body all but her arms. Here she would 30 be balked. To understand how a grub weaves itself a close-fitting garment, closed at both ends, from its own hair, or by what sleight of hand it attaches its cocoon to the end of a branch, I suppose 35 one would need to witness the process. In October, these preparations and transformations in the insect world are taking place all about us, and we regard them not. The caterpillars are getting 40 ready for a sleep out of which they awaken in the spring totally different creatures. They tuck themselves away under stones or into crevices, they hang themselves on bushes, they roll themselves up 45 in dry leaves, and brave the cold of winter in tough garments, woolly or silky, of their own weaving. Some of them, as certain of the large moths, do what seems like an impossible stunt: they shut them- 50 selves up inside a tough case, or receptacle, and attach it by a long strong bit of home-made tape to the end of a bush, so that it swings freely in the wind. I have seen the downy woodpecker trying 55 to break into one of these sealed-up, living tombs without avail. Its free, pendent position allows it to yield to the strokes of the bird, and all its efforts to penetrate the case are in vain. How the big, clumsy worm, without help or hands, wove itself into this birdproof case, and hung itself up at the end of a limb, would be a problem worth solving. Of course it had its material all within its own body, so is not encumbered with outside tools or refractory matter. It was the result of a mechanical and a vital process combined. The creature knew how to use the means which nature had given it for the purpose. Some of the caterpillars weave the chrysalis-case out of the hairs and wool that make their summer coats, others out of silk developed from within. On October mornings I have had great pleasure in turning over the stones by the roadside and in lifting up those on the tops of the stone walls and noting the insect life preparing its winter quarters under them. The caterpillars and spiders are busy. One could gather enough of the white fine silk from spider tents and cocoons to make a rope big enough to hang himself with. The jumping spider may be found in his closely woven tent. Look at his head through a pocket-glass, and he looks like a miniature woodchuck. His smooth, dark-gray, hairy pate and his two bead-like eyes are very like; but his broad, blunt nose is unlike. It seems studded with a row of five or six jewels; but these jewels are eyes. What extra bounty nature seems to have bestowed upon some of these humble creatures! We find our one pair of eyes precious; think what three or four pairs would be if they added to our powers of vision proportionately! But probably the manyeyed spiders and the flies, with their compound eyes, see less than we do. This multitude of eyes seems only an awkward device of Nature's to make up for the movable eye like our own. In some of the spiders' cocoons under the stones on the top of the walls you will find masses of small pink eggs, expected to survive the winter, I suppose, and hatch out in the spring. The under side of a stone on the top of a stone wall seems like a very cold cradle and nursery, but the caterpillars in their shrouds survive here, and may not the spiders' eggs? In October you will find the caterpillars in all stages of making ready for winter. They first cover a small space on the stone seemed to be in the midst of a little thicket of vertical, shining silken threads. It was like some enchantment. A little later the thicket, or veil, had developed 5 into a thin cradle in which lay the chrysalis and the cast-off skin of the worm. This caterpillar had been disturbed a good deal and made to waste some of its precious silk, so that its cocoon was finally a thin, poor one. 'Life under a stone' forms a chapter in nature's infinite book of secrecy which most persons skip, but which is well worth perusal. upon which they rest with a very fine The Century Magazine, June, 1918. EDWARD EGGLESTON (1837-1902) Of the new western school of writers of which Mark Twain and Bret Harte were pioneers, Edward Eggleston was the third member both in order of time and in importance. He was the first to introduce prominently the middle border states into literature. Indiana, at the time of his birth in 1837 was new and raw, and the "Hoosiers," like the early Missouri "Pikes," were in the more remote districts exceedingly crude and grotesque. The father of Eggleston, a Virginian, a graduate of William and Mary, an early pioneer who had settled as a lawyer in Vevay, was a brilliant man, and, though he died when his son was but nine years of age, undoubtedly was the force that turned the boy ultimately toward literature. When he was thirteen Eggleston went to live with his grandfather in the then crude regions of Decatur County where he first saw many of the picturesque types that later he was to use in his books. Later, after he had chosen the ministry for his profession and had been given a four weeks' circuit in the Ohio River bottoms, he saw much more. His health breaking down, he was transferred to Minnesota, held pastorates in St. Paul and other places, settled at length in Chicago as the editor of the Little Corporal, a paper later merged in St. Nicholas, and finally was called to Brooklyn as a pastor, resigning after five years to devote himself wholly to literature. Eggleston first attracted attention with his story first published in the staid columns of Hearth and Home, The Hoosier Schoolmaster, 1871, a Dickens-like tale laid in the crude regions of early Indiana. Its humor, its strange types, and its undoubted moral atmosphere, gave it a circle of readers wider even than that which had greeted the first stories of Harte. He followed it with others even better: notably The End of the World, 1871, which treated of the Millerite delusion of the mid century. The Circuit Rider, 1874, and The Graysons, 1888, which had as one of its characters Abraham Lincoln. Undoubtedly there is much of crudeness in this early work, but parts of it are exceedingly valuable. The End of the World and The Circuit Rider are realistic studies, by one to the manner born, of an era in our national life that has vanished forever.' The influence of Eggleston in turning the period toward localized fiction dealing with unusual types, was undoubtedly considerable. LIGHT IN A DARK PLACE1 Judge Watkins's austere face assumed a yet more severe expression; for though pity never interfered with justice in his nature, it often rendered the old man un5 happy, and therefore more than usually irascible. The people who had seats in the courtroom were, for the most part, too wise in their generation to vacate them during the noon recess. Jake Hogan clambered down from his uncomfortable windowroost for a little while, and Bob McCord took a plunge into the grateful fresh air, but both got back in time to secure their 10 old points of observation. The lawyers came back early, and long before the judge returned, the ruddy-faced Magill was seated behind his little desk, facing the crowd and pretending to write. He 15 was ill at ease; the heart of the man had gone out to Tom. He never for a moment doubted that Tom killed Lockwood, but then a sneak like Lockwood richly desarved it,' in Magill's estimation. 20 the horrible, watched the process. The 1 Copyright by the Century Company, 1888. There was a painful pause after the judge had taken his seat and ordered the prisoner brought in. It was like a wait before a funeral service, but rendered ten times more distressing by the element of suspense. The judge's quill pen could be heard scratching on the paper as he noted points for his charge to the jury. To Hiram Mason the whole trial was unendurable. The law had the aspect of a relentless boa-constrictor, slowly winding itself about Tom, while all these spectators, with merely a curious interest in deadly creature had now to make but one more coil, and then, in its cruel and de liberate fashion, it would proceed to tighten its twists until the poor boy should be done to death. Barbara and the mother were entwined by this fate as well, while Hiram had not a little finger of help for them. He watched Lincoln as he took his seat in moody silence. Why had the lawyer not done anything to help Tom? Any other lawyer with a desperate case would have had a stack of law-books in front of him, as a sort of dam against the flood. But Lincoln had neither law-books nor so much as a scrap of paper. apparently embarrassed. He had deteriorated in appearance lately. His patentleather shoes were bright as ever, his trousers were trimly held down by straps, 5 his hair was well kept in place by bear's oil or what was sold for bear's oil, but there was a nervousness in his expression and carriage that gave him the air of a man who had been drinking to excess. Tom 15 looked at him with defiance, but Dave was standing at the right of the judge, while the prisoner's dock was on the left, and the witness did not regard Tom at all, but told his story with clearness. Something of the bold assurance which he displayed at the inquest was lacking. His coarse face twitched and quivered, and this appeared to annoy him; he sought to hide it by an affectation of nonchalance, as he rested his weight now on one foot and now on the other. The prosecuting attorney, with a taste for climaxes, reserved his chief witness 15 to the last. Even now he was not ready to call Sovine. He would add one more stone to the pyramid of presumptive proof before he capped it all with certainty. Markham was therefore put up to identify 20 the old pistol which he had found in Tom's room. Lincoln again waived cross-examination. Blackman felt certain that he himself could have done better. He mentally constructed the questions that should 25 have been put to the deputy sheriff. Was the pistol hot when you found it? Did it smell of powder? Did the family make. any objection to your search? - Even if the judge had ruled out such questions the 30 jury would have heard the questions, and a question often has weight in spite of rulings from the bench. The prosecuting attorney began to feel sure of his own case; he had come to his last witness and 35 his great stroke. 'Call David Sovine,' he said, wiping his brow and looking relieved. 'David Sovine! David Sovine! David Sovine!' cried the sheriff in due and an- 40 cient form, though David sat almost within whispering distance of him. The witness stood up. Howld up your roight hand,' said the clerk. Then when Dave's right hand was up Magill rattled off the form of the oath in the most approved and clerkly style, only adding to its effect by the mild. brogue of his pronunciation. 'Do sol'm swear 't yull tell th' truth, th' 'ole truth, en nuthin' b' th' truth, s' yilpye God,' said the clerk, without once pausing for breath. 'Do you know the prisoner?' asked the prosecutor, with a motion of his head toward the dock. 'Yes, well enough;' but in saying this Dave did not look toward Tom, but out of the window. 'You 've played cards with him, have n't you?' 'Yes.' 'Tell his Honor and the jury when and where you played with him.' 'We played one night last July, in Wooden & Snyder's store.' Who proposed to Tom to play with you?' 'George Lockwood. He hollered up the stove-pipe for Tom to come down an' take a game or two with me.' 'What did you win that night from Tom?' Thirteen dollars, an' his hat an' coat an' boots, an' his han'ke'chi'f an' knife.' 'Who, if anybody, lent him the money 45 to get back his things which you had won?' 'George Lockwood.' Here the counsel paused a moment, laid down a memorandum he had been using, 50 and looked about his table until he found another; then he resumed his questions. Sovine ducked his head and dropped his 55 hand, and the solemnity was over. Dave, who was evidently not accustomed to stand before such a crowd, was Tell the jury whether you were at the Timber Creek camp-meeting on the 9th of August.' 'Yes; I was.' 'What did you see there? Tell about the shooting.' Dave told the story, with a little prompt |