drifting throng, "have these good countrymen of yours no other names but
monosyllabic, nothing to designate them but these chirruping syllables?"

"Is it not enough?" answered my companion. "Once indeed I think we had
longer names, but," she added, smiling, "how much trouble it saves to
limit each one to a single sound. It is uncivil to one's neighbours to
burden their tongues with double duty when half would do."

"But have you no patronymics--nothing to show the child comes of the
same source as his father came?"

"We have no fathers."

"What! no fathers?" I said, starting and staring at her.

"No, nor mothers either, or at least none that we remember, for again,
why should we? Mayhap in that strange district you come from you keep
count of these things, but what have we to do with either when their
initial duty is done. Look at that painted butterfly swinging on the
honey-laden catkin there. What knows she of the mother who shed her life
into a flowercup and forgot which flower it was the minute afterwards.
We, too, are insects, stranger."

"And do you mean to say of this great concourse here, that every atom is
solitary, individual, and can claim no kindred with another save the loose
bonds of a general fraternity--a specious idea, horrible, impracticable!"

Whereat An laughed. "Ask the grasshoppers if it is impracticable;
ask the little buzzing things of grass and leaves who drift hither and
thither upon each breath of wind, finding kinsmen never but comrades