Ant ventures

Once upon a time there was an Ant sitting on a leaf to think. He was tired of working, and his mother had sent him out to hunt for a little green Worm to stow away in the larder, but he did not want to do even that.

“I never saw such a stupid world!” he said aloud. “All there is to do is to carry out the earth all day long, or else go hunting for the family’s food, and I am tired of it all!”

“Ho!” said a voice near him. “All you want is a change. You think you have seen the world, but I will give you something that will cure you. I know your mother well, so you take her this prescription I am writing. Give it to her with my compliments and tell her I said that it is all you need to make you the happiest Ant in the whole wide world.”

The Ant looked, and there sat a Beetle on the same leaf. He had on large, horn-rimmed spectacles, and was writing busily on a physician’s prescription pad. Any one could see he was a doctor. He handed the prescription to the Ant, took off the big spectacles, and said, “Now run along to your mother, and show her this at once.”

The Ant took the prescription, thanked the Beetle, and ran down the stem of the leaf to the ground and back to Ant-Hill Manor, where he lived. He could not read a word of the prescription himself, for whoever could read a physician’s prescription, anyway? No one but the doctor himself and the druggist, I am sure. But at the top of the paper the Ant could read plainly:

ALEXANDER BEETLE BUG, M. D.

“That must mean Alexander Beetle Bug, Meadow Doctor,” thought the Ant.

Well, sir, when he walked into the main doorway of Ant-Hill Manor and showed the paper to his mother, he found that some one besides doctors and druggists could read prescriptions, for she understood every sign scrawled upon the paper. Dr. Bug had been an old schoolmate of hers, and this was a secret code they had used when they wanted to write notes in school. She had to laugh like everything.

“All right,” said she. “Here is the best advice I ever had. My old friend Dr. Bug says you need a change. So go put up your wheelbarrow, which is lying where you left it when you would not work this morning, and close the tool-house door carefully when you come out. By that time I shall have your things ready for you. You may start today.”

Off went the Ant to do as he was told. When he came back, there stood his mother with his best hat in one of her hands, his Sunday suit in another of them, his toothbrush, comb, wash cloth, and soap in a little case in another hand, his best Sunday shoes and stockings in another, and a basket of lunch in another.

“Change your things right away,” said she, “for the sooner you begin your trip, the better.”

He washed himself and put on his best clothes. When he was ready, she gave him his little case, his lunch basket, and his hat and kissed him good-by. He thought she did not seem very sorry about his going, and that was queer, for never before had he been away from her overnight. He did not say anything, though, but put on his nice straw hat with his initials inside--_A. A._ for _Anthony Ant_--and down the steps of Ant-Hill Manor he went while all the other Ants waved their feelers at him. Not one of them cried a tear. He even imagined his mother was smiling as though it were all a joke.

Anyway, he had nothing to do now except to go wherever he wanted to, so he decided to keep to the right and go all the way around the field. That would be going around the whole world, he thought. Off he went, over grass and under grass; up stalks and down stalks; into holes and out of holes; around stones and over stones; across stem bridges and across twig bridges; part way on the rail fence; part way on a log; up a stump and across the stump and down the stump; until he was tired from going such a long stretch at a time, and he sat down to rest and to eat a little of his lunch. He was glad his mother had put so much into the basket, for he was hungry. He took off his best hat, hung it on a short weed near by, and leaned his head against a stout stem. Then he opened the basket and took out some of the lunch.

There were dainty sandwiches made of sliced, cold-boiled caterpillar, some delicious pieces of Butterflies’ wings, and other sandwiches of thinly sliced dried Cricket. In one corner of the basket was a small pot of his favorite meadow-flower honey. There were poppy-seed biscuits too, some clover-sugar cookies, and a huge piece of cold roast Grasshopper which would last him for several meals.

The Ant felt much refreshed after his rest and the lunch. He packed what was left of the food back in the basket and reached for his hat. Ho! but no hat was there! He looked and looked under the weed where he had hung it, and everywhere about the place, and all at once he spied a Field Mouse eating the last of its pretty ribbon hatband. It was too late to save even the band of the hat, and all the Field Mouse would say when the Ant spoke about the matter was that the hat was the best thing he had tasted in a long time. Then off he went to hunt for more best hats to eat, maybe.

Well, to take a trip around the world, and not have a hat to wear, was sad for the Ant, but unless he went home and gave up the trip he would have to go bareheaded. As he was too proud to give up, bareheaded he went, and he tramped all the afternoon, meeting many strange people he never had seen near Ant-Hill Manor. There were Bugs large and small; Bugs that were fierce and Bugs that were kind; strange little Insects; Worms of many different colors; Flies, Moths, and Butterflies of all the old kinds and new kinds too. They were all as happy as could be, and hardly would speak to him, they were so busy. The Ant tried to talk to several of them, but they would not stop their work to listen. They were making their homes, or taking care of them, or hunting for their suppers. He was the only traveler in the world, he thought.

That night he was more tired than he ever had been on his hardest day of work. He ate an early supper and was almost too tired to open the jar of his favorite honey. He ate a clover-sugar cooky and nearly fell asleep over it, and then went to bed under a dry leaf, after carefully hiding all his things, for he remembered what had happened to his hat.