opportunity to watch the development of a good many of the cocoons and
chrysalides that the nature study club had placed in glasses in a window
of the reading room.

He had been making sketches of the development of several butterflies.
This kind of work he dearly loved. He would spend hours, sometimes,
watching a delicate insect emerge from its cocoon and slowly dry its
dainty, crumpled wings until it was able to fly.

One day he sat sketching an immense Ichneumon fly that had just emerged
from a Tawny Admiral chrysalis.

"You can't always tell," he was saying to the little group that were
watching him. "Nature fools you sometimes. Mr. Caterpillar, who built
that clean, cozy little house, and he was a fine, big, healthy fellow,
too, expected to be somebody one of these days--a beautiful butterfly
like the frontispiece of that nature book--but he got into bad company
and got 'stung.' Now, instead of hatching a butterfly, out comes this
robber fly, a long, lean, sleek-looking fellow that has been living for
weeks on the body of that poor caterpillar, and we didn't know it. You
want to watch out who you run with, fellows, or you're liable to turn out
'Ichneumon men' instead of gentlemen." He laughed as he returned the
glass to the shelf and closed his sketch book.

"What in the world!"

"Pots and kettles, frying pans,
French toast, hot cakes, Chef's the man;
We'll wash our hair and comb our face,
Camp Tech--ump--sa, that's the place."