[Illustration: A SUMMER INVASION] A SUMMER INVASION "Are you comfortable, Mary?" I ask, "and shall I begin?" "Yes; in just a minute," Mary replies; "I want to sit so that I can see both ways, Lagunita that way and the brown field with the tarantula holes that way," and she sweeps half the horizon with a chubby hand. We are half-sitting, half-lying, in the shade at the base of a live-oak on a little knoll back of the campus, whence we can look down on the red-tiled roofs and warm buffy walls of the Quadrangle, and on beyond to the Arboretum with its great eucalyptuses sticking out above the other trees. We can catch glimpses of the bay, too, and of the white houses of the caretakers of the oyster-beds perched on piles above the water like ancient Swiss lake-dwellers. Strolling about over the brown field of the tarantula holes and carrying bundles of sticks, and stooping down now and then to strike at the ground with one of the sticks, are several young men, Sophomores by their hats, and one of them with a red jacket on: "Gowfin' a' the day, Daein' nae wark ava'; Rinnin' aboot wi' a peck o' sticks Efter a wee bit ba'!" Mary recites this in a pretty singsong. "Why, Mary, where did you learn that?" I ask in surprise. "From the Scotch lady that I take of." "Take of! What is it you take of her? I hope not measles or smallpox, or--" "Why no, of course not. Music. That's what all young ladies take." "Oh, I see! It _is_ catching, isn't it? I have seen some bad cases, especially in small towns. Every young lady, even just girls"--I glance sidewise at Mary--"down with it. But is that what those boys over there are doing? I hope they won't interfere with the tarantulas. They probably don't know what lively times there are at nights in that field. Scores of big black tarantulas racing about, hunting, and hundreds of beetles and things racing about, trying to keep from being eaten. Well, I'd better begin, because we have to get back by luncheon time. I have a most profound lecture to give on Orthogenesis and Heterogenesis to that unfortunate Evolution class at two o'clock." "I'm all ready," said Mary, looking up at me with confidence. _She_ appreciates the kind of lectures I give outdoors, even if the lunch-gorged students don't appreciate my efforts _ex cathedra_. "Well this summer invasion that I promised to tell you about happened when I was a boy in a little town in Kansas. It was in Centennial year; the one-hundredth anniversary of the freedom of the United States, and the summer of the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. "I was going down town one day in July to buy some meat for dinner. I was going because my mother had sent me. Naturally this promised to be a very uninteresting excursion. But you never can tell.