and as they close in upon the devoted inhabitants, their blended cries swell in pitch and compass until the sound resembles the impassioned tone of a fish-peddler’s horn. I stopped at a hotel in the lower part of the city, and before retiring for the night looked carefully about the room. As few mosquitoes were in sight, I concluded to sleep without using the bar. Congratulating myself on being assigned a room where so few of the common enemy of man were lying in wait, I extinguished the light and turned in. Scarce was I stretched upon the couch when “At once there rose such hungry yells, From every point the compass tells,” that I lost no time in striking a light and adjusting the netting. I now saw them emerging from every conceivable hiding place. Trooping they came, from behind picture-frames, from under the bureau; out of vases and old empty bottles. They were climbing and clambering and pitching towards me with energy. I noticed a steady stream of them shooting out of the closet through the key-hole, with such velocity that they went warping half-way across the apartment before they could check themselves sufficiently to tack around and dive for the bed. They had all they bargained for, to get safely through that key-hole, too. There was not much spare room, I can tell you. But for the great pressure from behind kept up by others anxious to get through, many a large fellow would have been sticking in that opening yet. But once they got started in, there was no backing out; no, indeed! On! on’, was the cry, and they pressed forward with a rush, often sacrificing a leg or wing by the maneuver. But they didn’t seem to care for the loss of one of those members so long as their bill remained intact. Deprive a mosquito of one wing, and he will seem to laugh at you while he makes the other do double duty. Brush off one leg, and he will shake the remaining ones triumphantly in your face. [Illustration: TO THE HILT IN BLOOD.] But damage his bill and you demoralize him at once. He becomes immediately disheartened. He loses caste among his companions and confidence in himself. He wabbles about here and there to no purpose, like an old bachelor. You deprive him at once of his song and his supper. You can hardly picture to yourself a more dejected insect, one more hopelessly down in the mouth. He withdraws to the ceiling, or curtain, and looks with envious eyes upon his associates gorging themselves while his poor digestive organs are drying through inactivity. We would be inclined to pity him in his sad condition, were it not that we hold the whole insect race as coming under our ban. The whine of disappointment, long, loud and quavering, that went up when they ascertained I was protected, will always remain a fixture in my memory.