Don’t despise the simile and think it rough

Walter Moxon, Pilocereus Senilis and Other Papers, Londres, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1887, p. 42.

Did you ever see a caddis worm? When I was fishing I never could stick a hook into a caddis worm. I never contemplate a caddis worm without a certain feeling of brotherhood. Nature is essentially too satirical in the ways she takes off one thing when she designs another. Every one has, by nature the faculty of picking up bits wherewith to furnish himself according to the grounds he is upon at the time, as the caddis worm dresses herself in scraps of green when she is upon the leaves, and in bits of brown when upon the stones. Don’t despise the simile and think it rough. Don’t say to me, « Everything has bot hits higher and lower parallels; why should our elevated minds take the lower parallels? » I should be tempted to reply « To keep down ar our proper level, O Brother worms! » In point of fact, I expect, the mental dress of most of us is rougher by comparison, with the best satins and velves at Swan & Edgar’s. Most moinds are like magots dressed in scraps and all that is their own is just the glue the scraps are stuck with ; and so much is the weakness of even this glue recognised that in common conversation your subject must not be too deeply or seriously followed.
« The human mind » won’t endure it. In other words, uou mustn’t shake the scraps much for fear you see the magot.
Pilocecereus Senilis