Then the teacher drew his ferule or rod, and made them "bow" in submission to a smart whipping--a sequel anticipated by the older scholars who instituted the story. _House Spiders._--Was there ever a child who was not taught, directly or indirectly, that house spiders were poisonous,--that their bite was instantaneous death? Was there ever a greater mistake? Many people have a superstitious terror of these harmless creatures. The bite of spiders is only poisonous to those insects which the divine economy seems to have created for them to destroy. It is possible, as by a fly, sometimes for a slight skin inflammation, less than a mosquito's bite, to follow the sting of a spider on a very small child. Let me hereby disabuse the public mind of the repugnance or horror with which these little creatures are regarded. The Creator has evidently placed them here for the destruction of flies and other insects, which otherwise would completely overrun us. The fly is such a domestic creature, that he soon deserts a house where the family is long absent. The spider then removes also. (I have watched this proceeding, with no little interest, in the absence of my own family.) Therefore the spider was created to suppress a superabundance of insect life. When I have before stated this fact, the listener has been led to inquire why the flies were then made. We will not answer the suggestion of this "riddle" as the Irishman did (you know that he said, "To feed the spiders, to be sure"), but reply, that if this question is to arise in this connection, we may as well keep on our inquiry till we arrive at the greater riddle, "Why are _we_ created?"--to which we have no space for reply. It is said that manufacturers of quill pens in London, being greatly annoyed by a species of moth which infests their quills and devours the feathers, and the common spider being endowed with an inordinate appetite for those same moths, the penmakers and spiders are on the best of terms, and an army of these much-maligned and persecuted insects encamp in each pen factory, and do good service to the cause of literature as well as trade, by protecting the quills. We may yet find that even mosquitos and bedbugs have their uses in the wise economy of nature. Now, when tidy housewifery requires that brush and broom should ruthlessly demolish the webs,--the wonderful work and mechanism of the one species of house spider,--let it be done as a necessity, not with a feeling of repugnance to the harmless little insect; and let children be taught the truthful lesson that nothing is made in vain. _The House Cat_, with many, is regarded with unaccountable superstition. It goes with the witch, particularly the black cat. No witch ever could exist without one. This is usually the species that haunts naughty boys in their dreams after they have eaten too heartily of cake, and other indigestible stuff, at evening.