It’s a wonder, it’s a wonder That they live to tell the tale.
—Anon.
Mrs. Potato did not return. A sister bug rose to speak when the meeting opened after dinner. There had been a sad tragedy in the potato field, she told them, and even at that very minute the farmer and the farmer’s men, armed with barrels of “pizens,” were waging a in which millions of potato were going down to their death. “Alas! my friends,” she finished with a sigh that seemed to come from the very tips of her six feet, “no words can paint the dreadful scene. She who was here but a short while ago, so chipper and so gay, even she was giving her last as I fled from the field of carnage.”
 
The story moved the audience deeply, and all agreed that something should be done to suppress the farmers. It was even suggested to appoint a committee to consider ways and means, but at this point a very young potato bug asked the question:
 
“If there were no farmers, who would plant potatoes for us?”
 
“No one,” answered Mrs. Sawyer, who was there just as self-important as ever. “Then maybe there would be no potato bugs, and I for one wouldn’t be sorry.”
 
“Indeed,” said the potato bug who had told the tale of battle, “I’d have you know we are Colorado , if you please, and our family has a world-wide fame. We are true Americans, too, and not from Europe, like many other insects, and that 136reminds me: The other day when I was having a nice chew on some very juicy potato leaves, I heard somebody say to somebody else: ‘Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the West.’ He said a lot more, but I heard that plainly, and I wondered if he meant our family, and didn’t know our name, because, you know, we came out of the West.”
 
“I am sure he didn’t mean you,” said Ruth, who was in her old place right in the middle of the meeting. “That line is from a lovely piece of poetry about——”
 
“No one asked your opinion,” answered the potato bug angrily. “It is bad enough to have outsiders force themselves in, without being obliged to hear their silly remarks.”
 
Ruth’s face grew red, and she was about to reply, when Mrs. Sawyer whispered in her ear.
 
“Don’t mind her, she is only a potato bug.”
 
It was well that Mrs. Potato Bug did not hear this. “Before 1859,” she was saying, “our home was in the shade of the Rocky Mountains. There we fed on sandspur, a plant belonging to the potato family, and the East knew us not. It was only after the white settlers came West and planted potatoes that we found out how much nicer a potato leaf is than a sandspur leaf, so of course we ate potato leaves. We came East, travelling from patch to patch, and by 1874 we had conquered the country to the Atlantic Ocean. That shows what a smart family we must be, and I will tell you how we do. We lay our eggs on the potato leaves, and our children find their dinner all ready, and, as they hatch with splendid appetites, they get right to work. Those that hatch in the Fall sleep all Winter in the ground and come out as beetles in the Spring, just in time to lay more eggs. So we keep things going, especially the potatoes.” And Mrs. Potato Bug with the air of one quite proud of herself.
 
Her place was taken by a little ladybug, looking quite pretty in her reddish-brown dress, daintily with black.
 
“I have several cousins,” she said, “of 138different colours, but all spotted and all friends to farmers and fruit growers, for we eat the aphides and scale bugs which do so much harm to plants. We are called bugs, but of course we are beetles. I could tell you a story——”
 
“Never mind the story,” said a great brown blundering fellow, much to Ruth’s regret, for she wanted to hear the story.
 
“Excuse my awkwardness,” said the newcomer. “It bothers me to fly by day. I like to go around the evening lamps. I can buzz loud enough for a fellow three inches long, though I am really not one. I am called a June bug, and I’m really a May . What do you think of that? I have been told that the farmers do not like us, nor our children either. They are such nice, fat, white grubs too. They do love to suck the roots of plants though, and, as we grown fellows are just as fond of the leaves, between us we make the poor old plants pretty sick.”
 
“I wish something had made you sick before you came here to disturb quiet folks with your buzzing,” said a large blue beetle, dropping some oil from her in her excitement.
 
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she added when Ruth to her about it. “It only proves that I have a right to be called an oil beetle. In these days it is so important to know who is who.”
 
Ruth was watching the oil .
 
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
 
“Oh, no,” was the answer. “It is natural. I can’t move about fast, I am too fat, and I haven’t any wings to speak of. So when anything disturbs me I can only play ’possum and drop oil. I wasn’t always like this, though,” she went on, with a heavy sigh. “Would you believe it? I was born under a stone in a field of buttercups. I was tiny, but my body had thirteen joints and three pairs of as active little legs as you ever saw. Each had a claw on it too. 140What do you think of that? I used my legs right away to climb a nearby flower stalk. Something inside of me seemed to tell me just what to do, and when a bee came flying by, though she looked like a giant, I wasn’t a bit afraid, but I popped on her back, and clutched so tight with my six little claw-like legs she couldn’t have gotten me off if she had tried. But maybe she didn’t know I was there. Anyway, I had some lovely free rides, for she flew from flower to flower, and then she went home.”
 
“Oh,” interrupted Ruth, “did you go right into the hive?”
 
“Yes, but I didn’t notice much about it at first. I felt very tired, and I can only remember dropping from her back ............