# The Female Prose Writers of America/Susan Fenimore Cooper/Spiders

published in The Female Prose Writers of America
​Upon one of these violets we found a handsome coloured spider, one of the kind that live on flowers and take their colour from them; but this was unusually large. Its body was of the size of a well-grown pea, and of a bright lemon colour; its legs were also yellow, and altogether it was one of the most showy-coloured spiders we have seen in a long time. Scarlet or red ones still larger, are found, however, near New York. But, in their gayest aspect, these creatures are repulsive. It gives one a chilling idea of the gloomy solitude of a prison, when we remember that spiders have actually been petted by men shut out from better ​companionship. They are a very common insect with us, and on that account more annoying than any other that is found here. Some of them, with great black bodies, are of a formidable size. These haunt cellars, barns, and churches, and appear occasionally in inhabited rooms. There is a black spider of this kind, with a body said to be an inch long, and legs double that length, found in the Palace of Hampton Court, in England, which, it will be remembered, belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, and these great creatures are called “Cardinals” there, being considered by some people as peculiar to that building. A huge spider, by-the-bye, with her intricate web and snares, would form no bad emblem of a courtier and diplomatist, of the stamp of Cardinal Wolsey. He certainly took “hold with his hands, in kings’ palaces,” and did his share of mischief there.
Few people like spiders. No doubt these insects must have their merits and their uses, since none of God’s creatures are made in vain; all living things are endowed with instincts more or less admirable; but the spider’s plotting, creeping ways, and a sort of wicked expression about him, lead one to dislike him as a near neighbour. In a battle between a spider and a fly, one always sides with the fly, and yet of the two, the last is certainly the most troublesome insect to man. But the fly is frank and free in all his doings; he seeks his food openly, and he pursues his pastimes openly; suspicions of others or covert designs against them are quite unknown to him, and there is something almost confiding in the way in which he sails around you, when a single stroke of your hand might destroy him. The spider, on the contrary, lives by snares and plots; he is at the same time very designing and very suspicious, both cowardly and fierce; he always moves stealthily, as though among enemies, retreating before the least appearance of danger, solitary and morose, holding no communion with his fellows. His whole appearance corresponds with this character, and it is not surprising, therefore, that while the fly is more mischievous to us than the spider, we yet look upon the first with more favour than the last; for it is a natural impulse of the human heart to prefer that which is open and confiding to that which is ​wily and suspicious, even in the brute creation. The cunning and designing man himself will, at times, find a feeling of respect and regard for the guileless and generous stealing over him, his heart, as it were, giving the lie to his life.
Some two or three centuries since, when people came to this continent from the Old World in search of gold, oddly enough, it was considered a good sign of success when they met with spiders! It would be difficult to say why they cherished this fancy; but according to that old worthy, Hakluyt, when Martin Frobisher and his party landed on Cumberland Island, in quest of gold, their expectations were much increased by finding there numbers of spiders, “which, as many affirm, are signs of great store of gold.”