TOTAL DEPRAVITY OF FLIES.

Samoa Times and South Sea Gazette, Volume 2, Issue 65, 28 December 1878, Page 2

TOTAL DEPRAVITY OF FLIES.

Everybody will remember tho old lady of blessed memory who expressed tho conviction that total depravity was a very good doctrine, if people would only live up to it. It is evident the common noasetly is an earnest believer in this doctrine, and that it lives up to its faith with the utmost zeal and fidelity. The man does not live who has ever discovered a single virtue in these pestiferous creatures, while there is not a vice known to the moral code to which they are not hopelessly addicted. It is a case of original sin working out its results unchecked, and no scheme of regeneration Ims ever been introduced among them. The ant is industrious, the bee is skilful and useto man. the tlea may bo taught amusing tricks, spiders have, ere now, become pets and relieve the tedium of solitary prisoners, and even bugs and worms have their modest merits, and at least serve as food for nobler forms of creation ; hut the tly was never known to perform a meritorious act, and all his energies are devoted to making an unmitigated nuisance of himself. Perhaps his most conspicuous trait is bis colossal impudence. Albeit deinunitive in size, he will outdo a wilderness of hotel clerks and railroad officers in the display of arrogance and impertinence. He is more penetrating than love and stony limits cannot keep him out. No privacy is so sacred that this pestilent intruder does not make his way to its inner depths, without even ottering an apology. He never waits for an invitation, but conies everywhere as a "dead-head," without as much as remarking, " by your leave." The most enterprising and persistent of special commissioners is diffident in comparison. In august assemblies of State he invades the seat of honour, and does not forbear to perch upon the nose of the grandest plenipotentiary, or to explore the .nostrils of the Prime Minister. Even kings and Queens are not exempt from his prying curiosity, and he will walk boldly into royal cars, if carelessly left open, without the smallest compunction. At banquets he evades the most vigilant door-keeper and makes himself at home—au unwelcome but inevitable guest. He pounces upon the choicest viands, and takes a taste from every dish, and does not scruple to uso the frills and laces of tho company as his napkin. He hies him to my lady's chamber, and unblushingly explores its most guarded secrets. What he does not know about these things is not worth knowing, and he pries into them from sheer depravity. Thonco he ranges through all the habitations of high and low, and makes himself acquainted with every department of evory household. He is found at every resort of fashion or of pleasure, and is thoroughly cosmopolitan in his tastes. Sea-shore and mountain are alike to him, if he can riud human beings to torment and annoy. Not only is the fly an intolerable bore, through his persistent presence where he is not wanted, and his offensive familiarity, but his habits are every way bad. As a " dead-heat " he has no rival in animated nature. He keeps all manner of late hours, and utterly disregards the laws of health and decency. He loafs about bar-rooms, and partakes of free lunches without the least sense of shame or degradation. He eats and drinks of every thin" that can be oaten or drunken, and always at the exponse of somebody else, and without the slightest show of gratitude. Filth is as attractive to him as elogance and luxury, and he has a most repulsive habit of exploring every aocossiblo mass of pollution and stiaight-way betaking himself to the unprotected cheek of beauty or the delicious cates of the fastidious epicure. I Ie delights in tormenting man, from whose labours he derives his chief sustenance, and will take any mean advantage to give him annoyance. If his victum has the" misfortune of having to part his hair with a towel, ho will rally his forces, and make the sensitive expanso of the bald cranium a regular paradeground. Ho will pounce upon H man while he is helpless in a harbor's ohair, with his arms swathed lionoath half-a-dozen yards of calico, ami the primus

■dge of the razor at his throat, and wilt tarry him almost to distraction. He will catch his victim iu the act of taking or trying to take a nap, whether in the morning as a fringe to the disturbed slumbers of the night, or after dinner as a restoration from the cares of the day, and with maddoning ingenuity will keep him from the desired boon, and bring him to a state where he is ready to accept the conusel of Job's wicked wife.

And what are the consequences of the life of iniquity pursued by this depraved insect f Is there retribution adequate, to his offences prepared for him either in this world or the world to come ? On the theological branch of this inquiry wo shall not presumo to offer an opinion, but we are sure that he never conies by his full deserts here. He is idle, dissolute, gluttonous pestiferous, and tormenting, aud yet he seems to pass his life gaily, free from care or trouble, and defiant of nil laws, human and divine. He even defies the law of gravitation, and travels with equal ease in any direction or on any surface not smeared with sonio treacherous stickiness. Apparently he enjoys complete immunity from the retribution his conduct deserves, except when he is entrapped, through his insatiable appetite, into sloughs of poison or intricate traps from which he never escapes alive. We believe it is a fact that he never dies a natural death. No one ever knew a fly to be stricken down by disease or to linger out a painful oxisteuco under medical treatment. Fevers and headaches are to him unknown, .••. : breathes contagion with perfect inipaiitij He sometimes falls a victim to his in visible curiosity or insatiable appetite, and is scalded in tea, drowned in milk, or smothered in molasses, aud occasionally he is crushed or slaughtered as a penal l; for his temerity, but he never dies of siokuess or old age. Barring accident or violence, the rly is practically immortal, a perennial nuisance, a standing example of total depravity without, so fnr as wo know, the oternal punishment which is its proper corollary.—New York Times.