I used
to sit at night on the platform, and wonder why these creatures
were so happy; and what was wrong with man that he also did not
wind up his days with an hour or two of shouting; but I suspect
that all long-lived animals are solemn. The dogs alone are hardly
used by nature; and it seems a manifest injustice for poor Chuchu
to die in his teens, after a life so shadowed and troubled,
continually shaken with alarm, and the tear of elegant sentiment
permanently in his eye.
There was another neighbour of ours at Silverado, small but very
active, a destructive fellow. This was a black, ugly fly--a bore,
the Hansons called him--who lived by hundreds in the boarding of
our house. He entered by a round hole, more neatly pierced than a
man could do it with a gimlet, and he seems to have spent his life
in cutting out the interior of the plank, but whether as a dwelling
or a store-house, I could never find. When I used to lie in bed in
the morning for a rest--we had no easy-chairs in Silverado--I would
hear, hour after hour, the sharp cutting sound of his labours, and
from time to time a dainty shower of sawdust would fall upon the
blankets. There lives no more industrious creature than a bore.
And now that I have named to the reader all our animals and insects
without exception--only I find I have forgotten the flies--he will
be able to appreciate the singular privacy and silence of our days.
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