St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-04-16

balls, my pets; they eat their chill
edfen and the children eat each other
SO must get a good price for those
THAT survive their childhood
..tftIt Is not all kinds of spiders that
make webs. There are those that live
Din holes in the ground, and make
soft nets in cracks, while others spin
for themselves trap doors, while 9TH
erS spin small homes in the grass or
In the room corner. No indeed; 7
have sought out kinds that weave
themselves fine large webs of lines
and circles. They only look artistic
In the wine cellar or on the bouteilIe.
They are the selected ones. They are
three families-the names of them,
the Epira Vulgaris, the Zilla and the
Nephila Plumipes, which the entomo-
logists will tell you are the grand
web .sp:nners, the artists of the spider
world.
A. But what money is there in 1t,
you ask. Mon Dieu, money, money-al-
way money I who love my pets to be
always thinking of what they sell for?
/ will tell you now, and then you will
talk no more of money, and L will
show you something. A customer
icomes to me- He is wine merchant
from New York or Philadelphia, or
perhaps he writes. He says that he
has Just stocked a cellar with five
year old port, or Burgundy, or some
thing else. The bottles have been
brushed clean in shipping. They look
new and common. They will not sell
for old wine. He has attached to
them labels of twenty, thirty or forty
years ago, some year of grand vim
tage. He tells me so many hundred
bottles. I know how many of my
pets will soon cover his cellar in cob
webs of the finest old kind. 1 put them
in little small paper boxes, a pair in
a box. 1 ship them in crate, with
many holes for air. Maybe 1 send
two, three, four hundred spiders,
for them I ask half a franc each,
$40 for every hundred. In two months
you would think his cellar was not
disturbed for the last fifty years. 1t
has cost him $40 or $50 maybe, but he
may sell the wine for 81, 0O0-yes, more
than that-above what they had
brought without my pets had dressed
the bottles in the robes of long ago.
1.-THE merchant takes the parvenu
and the nouveau richie, who are easy
to fool and play with. He leads them
down into the dark cellar. BY the light
of the candle the customer. sees the
rows of bottles. Their necks are deep
in dust-it is easy to blow over them
dust. The cobwebs drape them; they
stretch from cork to cork-it is plain
that there is here great age. ALI my
cobwebs, mon ami. The customer has
what you call the pulling of the leg to
Z SC, DIT &c,
for him. Good wine is only meant for
! the, man who knows it.
Perhaps a man has quickly made
great wealth and keeps a grand es-
adjustment. He must have fine wine
cellar. Perhaps he buys himself old
wines, dusty and cobwebby. But the
cobwebs are broken and en- deshabille
when the bottles are moved to his
cellar. They have not the tone, the
look of the real old age, of the long
years of gentle rest in the undisturbed
dark, nest ce pas? Then he drives out
to see old Pierre, or writes from New
York. or Chicago-I do a grand bust
ness in Chicago. Sacristi, T send him
my pets. They work for him. Soon he
can take his rich friends into his cell
lar, and they say. Mon Dieu, this is
SupeIO, II Is mag we give
you congratulate my boy This is
what money cannot buy. My pets stop
working, and they do what you call
wink the other eye. They then resume
their toll"
Tell us how'you raise them and feed
them. Pierre" asked the visitor, in
sinuatingly.
"Corbleu, it is science, this rails
ing of spiders. 1 have on hand at one
time about 10000 spiders, old and
young. 1 brought some eggs from
France, and the choicest web makers
to be found. Here is the queen of them
all Her children are the superb spin
ners. Many hundreds of my pets are
her, descendants. 1t is a kind bred
by my great uncle in France
The old man led the way to "a glass
dome in the corner, beneath which a.
fiimsy web of beautiful pattern
stretched across nearly two feet. Pierre
touched one of the meshes and huge
black spider danced nimbly out from
her downy nest and ran up the vibrat-
ing thread to the old mans finger.
s He gave her a fly, and she tripped
back within doors with her booty.
This is Sara" said Pierre. "She
has the grace, the chic, the slender
beauty of the divine Bernhardt. She