Alas! see his sad disappointment.  After all this toil, after passing some splendid chances of good breakfasts on the way up, and spending all his strength on this one exploit, he finds the fresh air suffocating him, and a most strange and terrible feeling coming over him, as his coat-of-mail, which until now was always kept wet, shrinks, and seems even cracking off while the warm air dries it.

“Oh,” thinks the poor bug, “I must die!  It was folly in me to crawl up here.  The mud and the water were good enough for my brothers, and good enough for me too, had I only known it; and now I am too weak, and feel too strangely, to attempt going down again the way I came up.”

See how uneasy he grows, feeling about in doubt and dismay, for a darkness is coming over his eyes.  It is the black helmet, a part of his coat-of-mail; it has broken off at the top, and is falling down over his face.  A minute more, and it drops below his chin; and what is his astonishment to find, that, as his old face breaks away, a new one comes in its place, larger, much more beautiful, and having two of the most admirable eyes!—­two, I say, because they look like two, but each of them is made up of hundreds of little eyes.  They stand out globe-like on each side of his head, and look about over a world unknown and wonderful to the dull, black bug who lived in the mud.  The sky seems bluer, the sunshine brighter, and the nodding grass and flowers more gay and graceful.  Now he lifts this new head to see more of the great world; and behold! as he moves, he is drawing himself out of the old suit of armor, and from two neat little cases at its sides come two pairs of wings, folded up like fans, and put away here to be ready for use when the right time should come:  still half folded they are, and must be carefully spread open and smoothed for use.  And while he trembles with surprise, see how with every movement he is escaping from the old armor, and drawing from their sheaths fine legs, longer and far more beautifully made and colored than the old; and a slender body that was packed away like a spy-glass, and is now drawn slowly out, one part after another; until at last the dark coat-of-mail dangles empty from the rushes, and above it sits a dragon-fly with great, wondering eyes, long, slender body, and two pairs of delicate, gauzy wings,—­fine and firm as the very ones he had been watching but an hour ago.

The poor black bug who thought he was dying was only passing out of his old life to be born into a higher one; and see how much brighter and more beautiful it is!

And now shall I tell you how, months ago, the mother dragon-fly dropped into the water her tiny eggs, which lay there in the mud, and by and by hatched out the dark, crawling bugs, so unlike the mother that she does not know them for her children, and, flying over the pond, looks down through the water where they crawl among the rushes, and has not a single word to say to them; until, in due time, they find their way up to the air, and pass into the new winged life.