A bat is beautifully soft and silky; I do not know any creature that is
pleasanter to the touch or is more grateful for caressings, if offered in
the right spirit. I know all about these coleoptera, because our great cave,
three miles below Hannibal, was multitudinously stocked with them, and often
I brought them home to amuse my mother with. It was easy to manage if it
was a school day, because then I had ostensibly been to school and hadn't
any bats. She was not a suspicious person, but full of trust and confidence;
and when I said, "There's something in my coat pocket for you,"
she would put her hand in. But she always took it out again, herself; I
didn't have to tell her. It was remarkable, the way she couldn't learn to
like private bats. The more experience she had, the more she could not change
her views. - Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1(2010) |
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