are probably offensive. The most reasonable
treatment is to keep silkworms in a pure and
inodorous atmosphere. Close weather, such as
precedes a thunderstorm, with the barometer
low and the air heated, is also dangerous. If
the air be dry, and the dust blowing, the floor
of the house should be sprinkled with water;
but if the atmosphere be loaded with moisture,
a stove should be lighted to dry the place,
whatever may be the degree of heat at the time. A
silkworm house should be furnished both with
a thermometer and an hygrometer. Either
drought or humidity in excess are productive of
evil consequences. The best ordinary temperature
to maintain is about twenty–five degrees
centigrade, or seventy–seven degrees Fahrenheit.
Under these conditions, the rearing will be
completed in thirty days. Crowding and heaping the
worms on the shelves is a fatal circumstance; a
yard square at least should be allowed to every
thousand worms. They do not like obscurity,
but manifest a fondness for light and heat.
Cleanliness and ventilation are indispensable
conditions of success. Feeding is most important;
at the times of moulting, the worms eat
little; but there is a period between each moult
when they are insatiable. Frequent meals are
of the greatest advantage. During the first
three stages, the worms should have twelve
meals in the twenty–four hours; from eight to
ten during the fourth; and seven or eight in
the fifth. The meals must not be interrupted
at night. The attendants may divide themselves
into two parties, one of whom will go to bed at
nine in the evening to rise at three in the morning;
the other half will keep watch till midnight.
The leaves may be economised by chopping
them into several pieces for worms in their
first three stages. If the leaves are sodden by
continued rains, the best way of drying them is
by mixing them up with a sufficient quantity of
coarse bran, which will absorb the moisture and
be left untouched by the caterpillars. The
leaves are best distributed by hand. It is more
convenient to hatch the silkworms in successive
batches rather than all at once, each batch being
kept separate.

A DAY'S RIDE: A LIFE'S ROMANCE.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

I WENT the next morning to take leave of
Harpar before starting, but found to my
astonishment that he was already off! He had,
I learned, hired a small carriage to convey him
to Bregenz, and had set out before daybreak. I
do not know why this should have annoyed me,
but it did so, and set me a thinking over the
people whom Echstein, in his "Erfährungen,"
says, are born to be dupes. "There is," says
he, "a race of men who are 'eingeborne
Narren'—'native numbskulls,' one might say—
who muddy the streams of true benevolence by
indiscriminating acts of kindness, and who, by
always aiding the wrong–doer, make themselves
accomplices of vice." Could it be that I was
in this barren category? Harpar had told me,
the evening before, that he would not leave
Lindau till his sprain was better, and now he
was off, just as if, having no further occasion
for me, he was glad to be rid of my companionship
—just as if—I was beginning again to
start another conjecture, when I bethought me
that there is not a more deceptive formula in
the whole cyclopædia of delusion than that
which opens with these same words, "just as
if." Rely upon it, amiable reader, that whenever
you find yourself driven to explain a motive,
to trace a cause, or reconcile a discrepancy,
by "just as if," the chances are about seven
to three you are wrong. If I was not in all
the bustle of paying my bill and strapping on
my knapsack, I'd convince you on this head, but
as the morning is a bright, but mellow, one of
early autumn, and my path lies along the placid
lake, waveless and still, with many a tinted
tree reflected in its fair mirror, let us not
think of knaves and rogues, but rather dwell on
the pleasanter thought of all the good and
grateful things which daily befal us in this same
life of ours. I am full certain that almost all of
us enter upon what is called the world in too
combative a spirit. We are too fond of dragon
slaying, and rather than be disappointed of our
sport, we'd fall foul of a pet lamb, for want of a
tiger. Call it self–delusion, credulity, what you
will, it is a faith that makes life very livable,
and, without it,

We feel a light has left the world,
A nameless sort of treasure,
As though one pluck'd the crimson heart
From out the rose of pleasure.
I could forgive the fate that made
Me poor and young to–morrow,
To have again the soul that played
So tenderly in sorrow,
So buoyantly in happiness.
Ay, I would brook deceiving,
And even the deceiver bless,
Just to go on believing!

"Still," thought I, "one ought to maintain
self–respect; one should not willingly make
himself a dupe." And then I began to wish
that Vaterchen had come up, and that Tintefleck
was rushing towards me with tears in her
eyes, and my money–bag in her hands. I wanted
to forget them. I tried in a hundred ways to
prevent them crossing my memory; but though
there is a most artful system of artificial
"mnemonics" invented by some one, the Lethan art
has met no explorer, and no man has ever yet
found out the way to shut the door against by–
gones. I believe it is scarcely more than five
miles to Bregenz from Lindau, and yet I was
almost as many hours on the road. I sat down,
perhaps, twenty times, lost in reverie; indeed,
I'm not very sure that I didn't take a sound
sleep under a spreading willow, so that, when I
reached the inn, the company was just going in
to dinner at the table d'hôte. Simple and
unpretentious as that board was, the company
that graced it was certainly distinguished, being
no less than the Austrian field–marshal in command
of the district, and the officers of his staff.