There is one trait in the character of bees, for which I feel, not merely admiration, but the most profound respect. Such is their indomitable energy and perseverance, that under circumstances apparently the most despairing, they will still labor to the utmost, to retrieve their losses, and sustain the sinking state. So long as they have a queen, or any prospect of raising one, they struggle most vigorously against impending ruin, and never give up, unless their condition is absolutely desperate. In one of my observing hives, I once had a colony of bees, the whole of which might have been spread out on my two hands, busy at work in raising a new queen, from a small piece of brood comb. For two long weeks, they adhered with unfailing perseverance and industry, to their forlorn hope: until at last, one of the two queens which they raised, came forth, and destroyed the other while still in her cell. The bees had now dwindled away to less than half their original number, and the new queen had wings so imperfect that she was unable to fly. I watched their proceedings with great interest; they actually paid very unusual attention to this crippled queen, and treated her more as they are wont to treat a fertile one. In the course of a week, there were not more than a dozen left in the hive, and in a few days more, I missed the queen, and saw only a few disconsolate wretches crawling over the deserted comb! Shame upon the faint-hearted and cowardly of our own race, who, if overtaken by calamity, instead of nobly breasting the dark waters of affliction, and manfully buffetting with their tumultuous waves, meanly resign themselves to their ignoble fate, and sink and perish where they might have lived and triumphed; and double shame upon those who thus "faint in the day of adversity," when living in a Christian land, they might, if they would only receive the word of God, and open the eye of faith, behold a bow of promise spanning the still stormy clouds, and hear a voice bidding them, like the great apostle of the Gentiles, learn not merely to "rejoice in hope of the glory of God," but to "glory in tribulations also."