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Show SPIDER A FRIEND OF MANKIND Really Undeserving of the Enmity That Is Felt Toward Him by the Average Housewife. Aside from snakes, there is probably no living thing which can look to mankind for friendship with so little hope as the spider, yet when the spi-3er spi-3er is fairly brought to trial it is rather rath-er hard to prove anything against him except his appearance and a few cobwebs. cob-webs. Apart from furnishing an example ex-ample of industry and patience from which we might well profit, the spider spi-der feeds exclusively upon freshly killed insects, all of them being of the kind denounced by sanitary authorities, au-thorities, the house fly being its favorite fa-vorite quarry. As the actual destruction destruc-tion of a few hundred house flies means that several hundred thousand that would otherwise have spent gay lives transmitting typhoid and other diseases will not come into existence, and as almost any spider should be able to account for aB many as three hundred in the course of a summer, to say nothing of stray mosquitoes and black gnats, we surely owe him something more than a flap with a H slipper when we happen to catch him out of his hole. A spider can bite, of course, but he seldom does except in self-defense, and even then the bite Is not worse than would have been received frcm any one of the several hundred mosquitoes he has probably dined upon, or will, if let alone. In the light of present scientific scien-tific knowledge, ilie story of the spider spi-der and the fly that was invited into the pretty parlor does not cause such a surge of sympathy for the fly as it once did. Harper's Weekly. Futility of a Visit to Lang. They were telling stories of the late Andrew Lang in one of the London clubs the other night. One man told a story of a dinner invitation given by Mr. Lang. He was staying in Marlowes Road, Earl's Court, a street away at the end of that long Cromwell road, which seems to go on forever. The guest was not very sure how to get to Marlowes Road, and Lang very kindly explained. "Walk right along Cromwell Road," he said, "till you drop dead, and my house is just opposite!" |