If we raise a crop of wheat, and the insect
foragers take tithes of it, we have no right to find fault: a share of
it belongs to them. If you plant a field with corn, and the weeds spring
up also along with it, why do you complain? Have not the weeds as much
right there as the corn? If you encamp in one of the numberless swamps
which surround this settlement, and get assailed by countless millions
of robust mosquitoes, why do you rave and swear (as I know most of you
would do under such circumstances) and want to know 'what in the ----
mosquitoes were made for'? Why, to puncture the skin of blockheads and
blasphemers like you, and suck the last drop of blood from their veins.
Why, let me ask you, did you go out there? That place belonged to the
mosquitoes, not to you; and you knew you were trespassing upon their
land. The mosquitoes exist for themselves, and were created for the
enjoyment of their own mosquito-life. Why was _man_ created? The Bible
does not answer the question directly; the divines in the Catechism say,
'To glorify God.' Now I should like to know if a Westminster Catechism
of the mosquitoes would'nt make as good an answer for them?
"And here I am just in the act of annihilating with a logical stroke
a multitude of grumblers and croakers. If this world does not belong
exclusively to man, and the other races have as much right here as he,
and, consequently, a claim to their proportion of land, water, and sky,
and their share of food for the sustenance of life, what follows?
"A great many men, taking northeast storms, bleak winds,
thunder-showers, flies, mosquitoes, Canada thistles, hot sunshine, cold
snows, weeds, briers, thorns, wild beasts, snakes, alligators, and such
like things, which they don't happen to like, and putting them all
together, attempt to persuade you that this green earth is a complete
failure, a wreck and blasted ruin.
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