The record-union., 1896-08-14

me. He is wine merchant from New
York or Philadelphia, or perhaps he
writes. He says that he has just stocked
cellar with -year-old port or Bur-
gundy, or something else. The bottles
have brushed clean in shipping. They
look like 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 a grand vint-
age. He tells me so many hundred bot
| ties | know how many of my pets will
soon cover his cellar in cobwebs of the
finest old kind. put them in little small
paper boxes, a pair in a box. l ship
them in crate, with many holes for
air. Maybe I send 200, 800 or 400 spi-
ders. For them I ask half a franc each,
$40 for every hundred. In two months
you would think his cellar was not dis
turbed for the last forty years. 1t has
cost him $40, or $50 maybe, but he may
sell the wine for 81 000-yes more than
that-above what it had brought with
out any pets had dressed the bottles in
robes of long ago.
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. 1t 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. All my cobwebs,
mon ami. The customer has what you
call the pulling of the leg to him. He is
proud. But it is good for him. Good
w NO iC nynlx fox H.
knows it.
THE WAY 1T WORKS.
Perhaps man has quickly made
great wealth and keeps grand estab-
lishment. 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 cell
| lar. They have not the tone, the look
| of the real old age, of the long years of
gentle rest in the undisturbed dark.
n estce pas? Then he drives out to see
old Pierre, or writes from New York or
| Chicago-I do a grand business in Chi
cago. Sapristi, I send him my pets.
They work for him. Soon he can take
his rich friends into his cellar, and they
| say, Mon Dieu, this is superb: it is
magnificent. We give you congratula-
tions, 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 insinu-
atingly.
| "Corbleau, it is a science, this raising
| OF spiders. I have on hand at one
time about 10000 spiders, old and
young. l brought some eggs from
France, and the choicest webmakers to
be found. Here is the queen of them
all. Her children are the superb SPIN
ners. Many hundreds Of my rets are
her descendants. 1t is the kind bred
by my great uncle in France"
| The old man led the way to a glass
dome in the corner, beneath which a
filIny web of beautiful pattern stretched
across nearly two feet Pierre touched
one of the meshes and a huge black
spider danced ninlbly out from her
downy nest and ran up the vibrating
thread to the old mans finger He gave
her 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 is the
pride of all my pets. All, here is Zola
| looking at you
| A hideous, hairy monster had craWled
up the fine wire netting that kept him
within bounds, and stared sardonically
not foot away from the writer's nose.
~ start and an exclamation were nat
ural but Pierre looked grieved.
Il do not blame you much" said he.
| ''Zola is good-natured and would not
hurt you, but he has the horrible look.
He has fits of bad temper sometimes.
Then ventrebleu, look YOU out He is
| the bird spider of Surinam His body
is two inches long, and he catches and
eats small finches and sparrows when
in the woods. His bite is bad poison
I doubt not it will kill you But I
tame him with kindness. Yet he is not
pleasant to think Of running around a
room He might have the bad temper.
He would eat all my pets in one day
But he is king of all spiders-le grand
monarch. Therefore 1 call him Zola,
| the. most superb of Writer'S.
&hen the mother spider wishes to
lay her eggs she makes little web in
a broad crack. See, here is one wearing
her nursery. Then she lays fifty eggs,
perhaps, like petite jelly drops. Then
she covers them up in a soft silken
cocoon and leaves then. In two weeks,
longer in winter, they begin to hatch.
1t is very difficult. 1t takes one or two
days. The eggshell or skin cracks off
in rags. Mon dieu, but there is a great
struggle for the infants. Then they
grow, and in week look like spiders
They molt often and shed their skins
like snake. l must separate the brood
at a tender age. 1t is hard to break up
| the family, but, sapristi, they devour
each other until the one is left, like
your droll tale of the cats of Kilkenny"