Evening star., 1932-09-07
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES Z. TRACEWELL.

that these cross lines were as nicely
placed for stress and strain as II they
had been devised by trained engineers.
Spiders evidently are trained. too. In
their way.
| The Spider University is a very old
one, which has been handing out de-
| grees for centuries. Its faculty Is Ia
nous, and its curriculum of the highest
| type, spider fashion.
| No human being-a two-legged ami
mal-who has stopped to watch a
spider, with its eight legs, at work but
has come to admire profoundly what
! he sees.
Up and down, busily, as If the very
existence of heaven and earth depended
upon 1t, the small Dubious creature goes,
! its secretion of the spinning fluid In
visible to the so-called naked eye.
There's plenty of chemistry there,
Jones thought, plenty of it. with SYM
bols and all. although the operating
chemist doesn't know anything about 1t.
He just stirs his retorts and out
comes spinning fluid.
! This he takes and drags along
through the air. The air solemnly does
bit of chemistry on its own account;
it hardens the fluid into line, the
very stuff cobwebs are made of.
The sky was getting darker all the
time, but the big spider did not worry.
| Worry was not in his horoscope.
| His abdomen was orange and very
large, but If he had any head Temple
ton Jones wasn't expert enough to de-
tect It,
A large magnifying glass, he thought.
would be just the thing to use in peer
ing at this strange customer. Not hav-
ing the glass. Jones safely put his eyes
| 10 v,ifl, -, To-, i,,nl rNf fha haacf
mesh copper screening inter-
posed, making Jones as immune to the
menace of the spider as the spider
seemed to be to Jones.
A few drops of rain fell.
| Then there was small furry, ac-
companied by wind in the trees.
The leaves made noise resembling
rain, rustling together on all the
boughs.
The spider ran busily up and down
on his strands.
Sunshine and shadow meant the
same thing to the spider evidently.
Weaving.
The rain descended, the best which
had been granted the dry earth for
more than month.
It was coming in the window, SO Tenn
pleton Jones closed 1t and forgot about
the spider.
An hour later. when the water had
slackened and was falling straight
down, he raised the sash and looked for
the spider.
It was not there
The web was gone, too.
There was not sign Of the spider
and not trace Of the elaborate web
which had taken the animal so many
days to erect.
Templeton Jones felt quite sorry
about it.
He had sat in," as 1t were, at the
construction.
He had watched those menacing legs
moving so automatically, yet so know
ingly, over the days.
During the dry days he would have
liked to have been able to tell the
spider that its efforts were going to be
lost at the touch OF the very first rain
He couldn't tell the spider, however
so that was that. Perhaps it was just
as we'll.
Jones turned to other tasks and for
got about this small tragedy of natural
life.
1t was Just before dusk that he
looked out the window again.
There was his old friend, as orange
as ever, hoisting himself aloft on a lone
line which ran from the middle of the
screen to a low branch of rhododen-
dron.
He was beginning all over again.
Templeton Jones felt like cheering.