CIV.--As I hope to see Paradise--there is not a green bough between this and Peckham!
SYL.--No, truly, not a twig! I would not advise any forlorn Babes to die in our woods, for Cock Robin would be painfully perplext to provide them with a pall. Alas! were a Butterfly to be born in our bowers, there is not a leaf to swaddle it in.
CIV.--Miserable man that I am, to have come down so late, or rather that winter should have arrived thus early! Ungenial climate! untimely Boreas!
SYL.--Blame not Boreas, nor winter neither. Boiling heat had more part than freezing point in this havoc. To think that even summer nowadays should go by steam!
CIV.--You speak in Sphynxian riddles! Oh, my Sylvanus, tell me in plain English prose what has become of the green emeralds of the forest?
SYL.--Destroyed in one day by a swarm of locusts. Not the locusts of Scripture, such as were eaten by St. John in the wilderness, but a new species. I caught one in the fact, on the very elm tree you wot of, and which it had stripped to the bone, saving one bough.
CIV.--I am glad, with all my heart, that you have him secure, for I delight to gaze on the wonders of nature, even of the destructive kinds. You shall show me your new locust. Of course you thrusted a pin through the body, and fixed it down to a cork after the manner of the entomologists.
SYL.--No, truly; for it knocked me down after the manner of the pugilists, and so made its escape.
CIV.--How! be they so huge, then? To my fancy, they seem more like flying dragons than locusts.
SYL.--It is true, notwithstanding. Some of them which I have seen, measured nearly six feet in length; others, that were younger, from three to five. One of these last, the Minimi, or small fry, I likewise took captive, though not without some shrewd kicking and biting, and striking with its fore-paws.
CIV.--The smallest of animals will do so to escape from bondage. I take for granted you knocked him on the head, for the sake of peace.
SYL.--No, indeed. I had not the heart; the visage was so strangely human, ape or monkey could not look more like a man in the face; and then it cried and whined for all the world like a mere boy.
CIV.--It would have been a kind of petty murder to slay him. I do not think I could commit Monkeycide myself. They look, as Lady Macbeth says, so like our Fathers. To kill an ape would plant the whole stings of an apiary in my conscience. I pray you go on with the description.