Anonyme, « Bugs and Things or Fred and Ethel at the Brookside », The American Teacher, volume VIII, Boston, New-England Publishing Copany, 1891, p. 294.

« Bugs and things » or Fred and Etel at the Brookside (*). Caddis worms

Ethel sat reding Water Babies, and was jus tat the place where naughty Tom is pulling open the pretty little caddis shell.
« What does this mean? » she said, taking the book to fred, who had just returned home. « I never saw caddis worms. What are they? »
« If you had come in Aprl, I could have shown you plenty of them. They make their cases of grains of sand and wee stones. I have taken off the stones and pulled the worms out, and they would go right to work and make another case. Some of them use just sand, and you find them hanging on grasses. They stay in the case about two weeks, then they break them open aznd the caddis-fly comes out. »
« Why, Fred! » cried Ethel, « if you broke the caddis case open ,you were as bad as Tom, » and the poor child looked distressed.
« I think Tom was jusr mischievous, and I wanted to study the little creature, » replied Fred, hardly knowung how to comfort the tender-hearted child.
« Well, Fred, you are the best boy I know, and I’m proud to have you for my cousin. I’ve been so happy here this summer. Somehow I can’t go back feeling as I did. I want to learn, now, and Watch things for myself. I love bugs and little things, now and I suppose you and Uncle Walter like them better than anything else. »
«What’s that? » said Uncle Walter, who had just come in. « This is what I like best:
« So we will wander, sing, and learn together,
And head our Mother Nature’s lover call ;
But you, oh Darling little lad and maidem,
To me, you are the sweetest things of all. »

(*) The writer is greatly indebted to Up and down the Brooks, published by Houghton Mifflin, & Co.