“I was once at work on the Princess Charlotte’s own bedstead. I was in the room, and she asked me if I had found anything, and I told her no; but just at that minute I _did_ happen to catch one, and upon that she sprang up on the bed, and put her head on my shoulder, to look at it. She had been tormented by the creature, because I was ordered to come directly, and that was the only one I found. When the Princess saw it, she said, ‘Oh, the nasty thing! That’s what tormented me last night; don’t let him escape.’ I think he looked all the better for having tasted royal blood. “I also profess to kill beetles, though you never can destroy them so effectually as you can bugs; for, you see, beetles run from one house to another, and you can never perfectly get rid of them; you can only keep them under. Beetles will scrape their way and make their road round a fire-place, but how they go from one house to another I can’t say, but they _do_. “I never had patience enough to try and kill Fleas by my process; it would be too much of a chivey to please me. “I never heard of any but one man who seriously went to work selling bug-poison in the streets. I was told by some persons that he was selling a first-rate thing, and I spent several days to find him out. But, after all, his secret proved to be nothing at all. It was train-oil, linseed and hempseed, crushed up all together, and the bugs were to eat it till they burst. “After all, secrets for bug-poisons ain’t worth much, for all depends upon the application of them. For instance, it is often the case that I am sent for to find out one bug in a room large enough for a school. I’ve discovered it when the creature had been three or four months there, as I could tell by his having changed his jacket so often, for bugs shed their skins, you know. No, there was no reason that he should have bred; it might have been a single gentleman or an old maid. “A married couple of bugs will lay from forty to fifty eggs at one laying. The eggs are oval, and are each as large as the thirty-second part of an inch; and when together are in the shape of a caraway comfit, and of a bluish-white color. They’ll lay this quantity of eggs three times in a season. The young ones are hatched direct from the egg, and, like young partridges, will often carry the broken eggs about with them, clinging to their back. They get their fore-quarters out, and then they run about before the other legs are completely cleared. “As soon as the bugs are born they are of a cream color, and will take to blood directly; indeed, if they don’t get it in two or three days, they die; but after one feed they will live a considerable time without a second meal. I have known old bugs to be frozen over in a horse-pond--when the furniture had been thrown in the water--and there they have remained for a good three weeks; still, after they have got a little bit warm in the sun’s rays, they have returned to life again.