" A new
generation has sprung up, some of the drones are still about the hive,
but there is a young vigorous race coming on who will keep pace with
the age.
It's a great thing to have a good glass to look in now and then and
see yourself. They have had the mirror held up to them.
Lord, I shall never forget when I was up to Rawdon here once, a
countryman came to the inn where I was, to pay me for a clock I had
put off on him, and as I was a passin' through the entry I saw the
critter standin' before the glass, awfully horrified.
"My good gracious," said he, a talking to himself, "my good gracious,
is this you, John Smiler? I havn't seen you before now going on twenty
years. Oh, how shockingly you are altered, I shouldn't a known you, I
declare."
Now, I have held the mirror to these fellows to see themselves in, and
it has scared them so they have shaved slick up, and made themselves
look decent. I won't say I made all the changes myself, for Providence
scourged them into activity, by sending the weavel into their
wheat-fields, the rot into their potatoes, and the drought into their
hay crops. It made them scratch round, I tell you, so as to earn their
grub, and the exertion did them good. Well, the blisters I have put on
their vanity stung 'em so, they jumped high enough to see the right
road, and the way they travel ahead now is a caution to snails.
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