SWALLOWING A FLY.

Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4230, 22 July 1882, Page 4

SWALLOWING A FLY.

[By the Bey. De Witt Talmage, D.D.]

"'A' * ' A country meetiajg°hcuse. A midsummer Sabbath. The air lazy and warm. The grave-yard around about oppres* sirely still, the white slabs here and there shining in the light like the drifted snows of death-; and? not a grass-blade rustling as though a sleeper had stirred in his dream. Clap-boards of the church weather* beaten, and very ifcueh bored, either by. humble-bees, or long sermons, probably ' the former, as the ; puncture was on the outside,.instead of the in. Farmers, worn out with harvesting, excessively soothed by the services into dreaming of the good time coming, when-wheat shall be worth twice as much to; the bushel, and a basket, of fresh-laid Jjggs will buy a Sunday jacket for a boy. We- had come to the middle of our Sermon, when a large fly, taking advantage of the opened mouth of the speaker, darted into our throat. The crisis was upon' us. . Shall we:: cough and eject this impertinent intruder; or let him silently have his way ? We! had no precedent to guide us. * We knew, not what the fathers of the Church did in like circumstances, or the mothers either. We are not informed that Chrysostom ever turned . himself into a. fly-trap. We knew not what the Synod of Dort would have said to a minister's eating flies during religious services. We saw the unfairness of taking advantage of a fly in such straitened circum-

stances. It may' have been a blind fly, and not have known where it was going. ' It may have been a scientific fly, and only experimenting with air currents. It may , have been a reckless fly, doing what he soon would be sorry for, or a young fly, and gone a-sailing on Sunday without his mother's consent. -Beside this, we are not fond of flies prepared in that way. We have, no doubt, often taken them preserved in blackberry jam, or, in the poorly lighted eating-house,.: taken them done up in Stewart's syrup. But fly in the raw was a^diet from which we recoiled. We would have preferred it roasted, or fried, or panned, or baked, and then to have chosen our favorite part, the upper joint, ' and a little of the breast, if you please, sir. Bjifc, no; it was wings, proboscis, feet, poisers, and alimentary canal. There was no choice; it was all, or none. We foresaw the excitement and disturbance we would make, and the probability of losing our thread of discourse, if we undertook a series of coughs, chokings, and expectorations, and that, after all our efforts we might be unsuccessful, and end the affray with a fly's wing on our lip, and a leg. in the windpipe, and the most unsatisfactory part of it all under the tongue.

,We concluded to take down the nuisance. We rallied all our energies. t It was the most animated passage in all our discourse.; ; We were not at all hungry for anything, much less for hastily prepared viands. We found it no easy job. . The fly evidently wanted to- back out. "No!" we said within ourselves. "Too late to retreat. You are in for it now!" We addressed it in the words of Noah to the orang-outang, as it was about entering the Ark, and lingered too long at the door, " Go in,-sir—go in I" And so we conquered, giving a warning to flies and men that it is easier to get into trouble than to get out again. We have never mentioned the above circumstance before; we felt it a delicate subject. But all the fly's friends are dead, and we can slander it as much as we please, and there is no danger now. We-have had the thing on our mind ever since we bad. it on our stomach, and so we come to this confessional. You acknowledge that we did the wisest thing that could be done ; and yet how many people spend their time in elaborate, and long-continued, and convulsive ejection of flies which they ought to swallow and have done with. Your husband's thoughtlessness is an exceeding .annoyance. He is a good man, no better husband since Adam gave up a spare rib as a nucleus around which to gather a woman. But he is careless about where he throws his slippers. On the top of one of your best parlor books he has laid a plug of pig tail tobacco. For fifteen years you have lectured him about leaving the newspaper on the floor. - Do not let such little things interfere with your domestic peace. Better swallow the fly, and have done with it. Here is a critic, to you a perpetual annoyance. He has no great capacity himself, but he keeps up a constant buzzing. You write a book, he cariea* in res it. You make a speech, he sneers at it. You never open your mouth, but he flies into it. You have used up a magazine of powder in trying to curtail the sphere of that insect. You chased . him around the corner of a Quarterly Review. You hounded him out from the cellar of a newspaper. You stop the urgent work of life to catch one poor fly— the Cincinnati Express train stopping at midnight to send a brakeman ahead with flag and lantern to scare the mosquitos off the track ; a " Swamp-Angel " out-a

gunning for rats. It never pays ,to hunt a fly. You clutch at him. .You. sweep your hand convulsively through the air. You wait till he alights on your face, and then give a fierce slap on the place where he was. You slyly wait till he crawls up your sleeve, and then give a violent crush to the-folds of your coat, to find out that it was a 1 different fly from the one you were searching after. That one sits laughing at your vexation from the tip of your nose. . Apothecaries. advertise insect-exter-minators ; but if in summer time we set a glass to, catch flies, for e_very one we kill there are twelve coroners called to sit as jury of inquest; and no sooner does one "- disappear under our fell pursuit, than all its brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, and second cousins come out to see what in the world is the matterl So with the unclean critics that crawl over an author's head. , You cannot destroy them with bludgeons. There is a time in a schoolboy's* Kjstory when a fine-tooth comb will givajtkim more relief than a whole park of artijjlery. O man ! go on with your life- ' work ! ' If,; opening your mouth to say the thing-that ought to be said, a fly dart in, swaieow it ! The current of your happiness is often choked up by trifles. Your chimney ~ smokes. Through the thick rapor you

see no bleuiug left.- You feel that with the right kind of a chimney you could be happy. It would be worse if you had no chimney at all; and still' worse if "yon had no fire. Household annoyances multiply the martyrs of the kitchen. T\\o want of more pantry room, the need of an additional closet, the smallness of the bread tray, the defectiveness of lite range the lack of draught in a furnace, a crack in the saucepan, are flies in the throat Open your mouth, shut your eyes, and gulp down the annoyances. fl he aforesaid fly; of whose demise I spoke, was digested, and turned into muscle and bone, and went to preaching himself. Vexations conquered become additional strength. We would all be | rich in disposition if we learned to tax for our benefit the things that stick and scratch. We ought to collect a tariff on needles and pinp ; The flower struck of the tempest, catches the drop that made it tremble, and turns the water into wine. The battle in, aod theviclory dependent on your next sabre- stroke, throw not your armour down to shake a gravel from your shoe. The blue fly of despondency has choked to death many a giant. Had we stepped on the afore said day to kill the insect, at the same time we would have killed our sermon. We could not -waste our time; on such a combat. j Truth ought not to be wrecked on an insect's proboscis. You are all ordained to some mission by the laying on of hands of work, the white hands of joy, and the black hands of trouble. Whether your pulpit be blacksmith's anvil, or carpenter's bench, or merchant's counter, do not stop for a fly. Our every life is a sermon. Our birth is the text from which we start. Youth is the introduction to the discourse. During our manhood we lay down a few propositions and" prove them. Some of the passages are dull, and some sprightly. Then come inferences and applications. At seventy years we say " Fifthly and lastly." The Doxology is sung. The Benediction .is pronounced. The Book closed. It is getting cold. Frost on the window-pane. . Audience gone. Shut up the church. Sexton goes home with the key on his shoulder.