The first faculty to be acquired was that of wandering among the bees, or standing between their straw houses, undismayed at their incessant and often terrifying approaches. Whatever confidence one may place in bee-keepers’ assertions that their bees never sting, it is a bold man who can preserve entire equanimity when bees are settling continuously on his hands, his face, his clothing, and a whole flying squadron of them are shrilling vindictively about his ears. Nothing will come of it, he knows, if only he can keep still. But the tendency to turn and flee, or at least to beat off these minatory atoms with wildly waving arms, is all but irresistible for the novice. It is only their way, he is assured, of expressing or of satisfying their curiosity; and, this being done, they fly off harmlessly enough to give a good report of him to the ruling powers within the hive. But he knows that this report is sometimes anything but good. At least, there are a few luckless individuals in the world who dare not venture within a dozen yards of a beehive without being set upon unmercifully, and chased by an angry squad of these tart virgins for the space of a quarter-mile. Moreover, in certain states of the weather—when thunder is about, and the air is tense and still—bees will often sheath their barbed daggers in any human skin, even that of their owner, who has gone among them daily all the season unmolested. There is, therefore, a fateful element of chance in all near watching of beehives, a sensation of being under fire—fine discipline enough, but, for the timorous, hardly to be reckoned among the easy joys of existence. These first deterrents, however, being happily overcome, the watcher is sure to be caught up, sooner or later, in the sheer fascination of the thing, and to find himself recklessly, almost breathlessly, looking on at what is nothing else than a great informing pageant of life. He stands, as it were, a stranger at the gates of a city, inhabited by the most interesting, and in some respects the most advanced, people in the world. Of the inner life of the city, apart from the deep busy murmur that surges out to him, he learns nothing, and will learn nothing until he puts sentimental pride in his pocket, and makes pilgrimage to the great bee-farm on the hill. But here, in the meanwhile, is food enough to satisfy the keenest appetite for the marvellous. In and out through the yawning entrance-gate of the city, under the hot May sunshine, there are thousands of busy people coming and going. The broad threshold of the hive is completely hidden under opposing streams, the one setting out towards the fragrant fields and hedgerows, the other tumbling and seething in, almost every bee dragging after her some kind of mysterious treasure.