Bill Nye's Cordwood — Bill Nye's Hornets

BILL NYE'S HORNETS.

Last fall I desired to add to my rare collection a large hornet's nest.

I had an enbalmed tarantula and her porcelain lined nest, and I desired to add to these the gray and airy home of the hornet.

I procured one of the large size after cold weather and hung it in my cabinet by a string.

I forgot about it until this spring.

When warm weather came, something reminded me of it.

I think it was a hornet.

He jogged my memory in some way and called my attention to it.

Memory is not located where I thought it was.

It seemed as though whenever he touched me he awakened a memory--a warm memory with a red place all around it.

Then some more hornets came and began to rake up old personalities.

I

remember that one of them lit on my upper lip.

He thought it was a rosebud.

When he went away it looked like a gladiolus bulb.

I wrapped a wet sheet around it to take out the warmth and reduce the swelling so that I could go through the folding-doors and tell my wife about it.

Hornets lit all over me and walked around on my person.

I did not dare to scrape them off, because they are so sensitive.

You have to be very guarded in your conduct toward a hornet.

I remember once while I was watching the busy little hornet gathering honey and June bugs from the bosom of a rose, years ago.

I stirred him up with a club, more as a practical joke than anything else, and he came and lit on my sunny hair--that was when I wore my own hair--and he walked around through my gleaming tresses quite awhile, making tracks as large as a watermelon all over my head.

If he hadn't run out of tracks my head would have looked like a load of summer squashes.

I remember I had to thump my head against the smoke house in order to smash him, and I had to comb him out with a fine comb and wear a waste paper basket two weeks for a hat.