It was born adult, I say; but at the same time, it was freer from care than the most favored of human children. No one ever gave it a lesson or set it a task. It was never restrained nor reproved; neither its own conscience nor any outward authority ever imposed the lightest check upon its desires. It had nobody's pleasure to think of but its own; for as it was born too late to know father or mother, so also it died too soon to see its own offspring. It made no plans, needed no estate, was subject to no ambition. Summer was here when it came forth, and summer was still here when it passed away. It was born, it lived upon honey, it loved, and it died. Happy and brief biography! Happy and brief; but what a multitude of questions are suggested by it! Did the creature know anything of its preëxistence, either in the chrysalis or earlier? If so, did it look back upon that far-away time as upon a golden age? Or was it really as careless as it seemed, neither brooding over the past nor dreaming of the future? Was it aware of its own beauty, seeing itself some day reflected in the pool as it came to the edge to drink? Did it recognize smaller butterflies--the white and the yellow, and even the diminutive "copper"--as poor relations; felicitating itself, meanwhile, upon its own superior size, its brilliant orange-red eye-spots, and its gorgeous tails? Did it mourn over its faded broken wings as age came on, or when an unexpected gust drove it sharply against a thorn? Or was it enabled to take every mischance and change in a philosophical spirit, perceiving all such evils to have their due and necessary place in the order of Nature? Was it frightened when the first night settled down upon it,--the horrible black darkness, that seemed to be making a sudden end of all things? As it saw a caterpillar here and there, did it ever suspect any relationship between the hairy crawling thing and itself; or would it have been mortally offended with any profane lepidopteran Darwin who should have hinted at such a possibility? The Antiopa butterfly, according to some authorities a near relative of the tiger swallow-tail, has long been especially attractive to me because of its habit of passing the winter in a state of hibernation, and then reappearing upon the wing before the very earliest of the spring flowers. A year ago, Easter fell upon the first day of April. I spent the morning out-of-doors, hoping to discover some first faint tokens of a resurrection. Nor was I disappointed. In a sunny stretch of the lonely road, I came suddenly upon five of these large "mourning-cloaks," all of them spread flat upon the wet gravel, sucking up the moisture while the sun warmed their wings. What sight more appropriate for Easter! I thought. These were some who had been dead, and behold, they were alive again.