SIXTH READER OUR ACTS OUR ANGELS ARE JOHN FLETCHER MAN is his own star, and the soul that can THE HOUSE FLY AND THE WATCHDOG JOHN RUSKIN I BELIEVE we can nowhere find a better type of a perfectly free creature than in the common house fly. Not free only, but brave; and irreverent to a degree which I think no human republican could by any philosophy exalt himself to. There is no courtesy in him; he does not care whether it is king or clown whom he teases; and in every step of his swift mechanical march, and in every pause of his resolute observation, there is one and the same expression of perfect egotism, perfect independence and selfconfidence, and conviction of the world's having been made for flies. Strike at him with your hand; and to him, the external aspect of the matter is, what to you it would be, if an acre of red clay, ten feet thick, tore itself up from the ground in one massive field, hovered over you in the air for a second and came crashing down with an aim. That is the external aspect of it; the inner aspect, to his fly's mind, is of a quite natural and unimportant occurrence, one of the momentary conditions of his active life. He steps out of the way of your hand, and alights on the back of it. You cannot terrify him, nor govern him, nor persuade him, nor convince him. He has his own positive opinion on all matters; not an unwise one, usually, for his own ends; and will ask no advice of yours. He has no work to do no tyrannical instinct to obey. The earthworm has his digging; the bee her gathering and building; the spider her cunning network; the ant her treasury and accounts. All these are comparatively slaves, or people of vulgar business. But your fly, free in the air, free in the chamber, a black incarnation of caprice, -wandering, investigating, flitting, flirting, feasting at his will, with rich variety of choice in feast, from the heaped sweets in the grocer's window to those of the butcher's back yard, and from the galled place on your cab-horse's back to the brown spot in the road, from which, as the hoof disturbs him, he rises with angry buzz- what freedom is like his ? For captivity again, perhaps your poor watchdog is as sorrowful a type as you will easily find. Mine certainly is. The day is lovely, but I must write this, and cannot go out with him. He is chained in the yard, because I do not like dogs in rooms, and the gardener does not like dogs in gardens. He has no books, —nothing but his own weary thoughts for company, and a group of those free flies, whom he snaps at with sullen ill-success. Such dim hope as he may have that I may yet take him out with me will be, hour by hour, wearily disappointed; or, worse, darkened at once into a leaden despair by an authoritative "No," too well understood. His fidelity only seals his fate; if he would not watch for me, he would be sent away and go hunting with some happier master; but he watches, and is wise, and faithful, and miserable, and his high animal intellect only gives him the wistful powers of wonder, and sorrow, and desire, and affection, which embitter his captivity! Yet, of the two, would we rather be watchdog or fly? Indeed, the first point we have all to determine is not how free we are, but what kind of creatures we are. It is of small importance to any of us whether we get liberty; but of the greatest that we deserve it. Whether we win it, fate must determine; but that we may be worthy of it, we may ourselves determine; and the sorrowfullest fate, of all that we can suffer, is to have it, without deserving it. phi los'o phy, wise reasoning. me chan'i cal, done as if by a machine. e'go tism, self-importance. fi del'i ty, faithfulness. in car na'tion, representation in a living body. ca price', fancy; changeableness. au thor'i ta tive, entitled to obedience. JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900) was an English artist and an eloquent writer on art and nature. He spent a fortune in seeking to improve the condition of the workingmen. Among his most noted works are "Modern Painters," "The Stones of Venice," and "Sesame and Lilies." The selection here given is from "The Queen of the Air." FOLDING THE FLOCKS BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER SHEPHERDS all, and maidens fair, |