—­Which book furnished you the old cover you wanted?—­said I.

—­Did he kill the owl?—­said the Master, laughing. [I suppose you, the reader, know the owl story.]—­It was Number Two that lent me one of his covers.  Poor wretch!  He was one of three, and had lost his two brothers.  From him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.  The Scripture had to be fulfilled in his case.  But I couldn’t help saying to myself, What do you keep writing books for, when the stalls are covered all over with ’em, good books, too, that nobody will give ten cents apiece for, lying there like so many dead beasts of burden, of no account except to strip off their hides?  What is the use, I say?  I have made a book or two in my time, and I am making another that perhaps will see the light one of these days.  But if I had my life to live over again, I think I should go in for silence, and get as near to Nirvana as I could.  This language is such a paltry tool!  The handle of it cuts and the blade doesn’t.  You muddle yourself by not knowing what you mean by a word, and send out your unanswered riddles and rebuses to clear up other people’s difficulties.  It always seems to me that talk is a ripple and thought is a ground swell.  A string of words, that mean pretty much anything, helps you in a certain sense to get hold of a thought, just as a string of syllables that mean nothing helps you to a word; but it’s a poor business, it’s a poor business, and the more you study definition the more you find out how poor it is.  Do you know I sometimes think our little entomological neighbor is doing a sounder business than we people that make books about ourselves and our slippery abstractions?  A man can see the spots on a bug and count ’em, and tell what their color is, and put another bug alongside of him and see whether the two are alike or different.  And when he uses a word he knows just what he means.  There is no mistake as to the meaning and identity of pulex irritans, confound him!

—­What if we should look in, some day, on the Scarabeeist, as he calls himself?—­said I.—–­The fact is the Master had got agoing at such a rate that I was willing to give a little turn to the conversation.

—­Oh, very well,—­said the Master,—­I had some more things to say, but I don’t doubt they’ll keep.  And besides, I take an interest in entomology, and have my own opinion on the meloe question.

—­You don’t mean to say you have studied insects as well as solar systems and the order of things generally?

—­He looked pleased.  All philosophers look pleased when people say to them virtually, “Ye are gods.”  The Master says he is vain constitutionally, and thanks God that he is.  I don’t think he has enough vanity to make a fool of himself with it, but the simple truth is he cannot help knowing that he has a wide and lively intelligence, and it pleases him to know it, and to be reminded of it, especially in an oblique and tangential sort of way, so as not to look like downright flattery.