THE LIVES OF THE OBSCURE
used since Mrs. Ormerod lay there, but still looked much the same. “We deeply felt the happiness of ministering to his welfare,” Miss Ormerod wrote, “for he would not hear of our leaving him for even twenty-four hours and he objected to visits from my brothers excepting occasionally for a short time. They, not being used to the gentle ways necessary for an aged invalid, worried him . . . the Thursday following, the 9th October, 1873, he passed gently away at the mature age of eighty-seven years.” Oh, graves in country churchyards—respectable burials—mature old gentlemen—D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., F.S.A.—lots of letters come after your names, but lots of women are buried with you!
There remained the Hessian Fly and the Bot—mysterious insects! Not, one would have thought, among God’s most triumphant creations, and yet—if you see them under a microscope!—the Bot, obese, globular, obscene; the Hessian, booted, spurred, whiskered, cadaverous. Next slip under the glass an innocent grain; behold it pock-marked and livid; or take this strip of hide, and note those odious pullulating lumps—well, what does the landscape look like then?
The only palatable object for the eye to rest on in acres of England is a lump of Paris Green. But English people won’t use microscopes; you can’t make them use Paris Green either—or if they do, they let it drip. Dr. Ritzema Bos is a great stand-by. For they won’t take a woman’s word. And indeed, though for the sake
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