In warm weather, especially in the spring, the slaves keep up a smoke, or fire and smoke, all night, to drive away the gnats and musketoes, which are very troublesome in all the low country of the south; so much so that the whites sleep under frames with nets over them, knit so fine that the musketoes cannot fly through them.

My dear friends, if God really hated you or me, do you not suppose that He would simply destroy usget rid of usabolish us and annihilate us off the face of the earth, just as we crush a gnat when it bites us?

I own I like not Johnson's turgid style, That gives an inch the importance of a mile; Casts of manure a wagon-load around To raise a simple daisy from the ground; Uplifts the club of Herculesfor what? To crush a butterfly or brain a gnat; Creates a whirlwind from the earth to draw A goose's feather or exalt a straw; Sets wheels on wheels in motionsuch a clatter!

they skim over it, but to catch a gnat, and then mount in the air and leave it!"

She stood quite motionless, looking not at him but at a whirl of dancing gnats on the gold-flecked water beyond him.

From him life flows out unto the smallest blade of grass beneath thy feet, the smallest gnat which dances in the sun, that it may live the life which God intends for it.

'You don't like gnats!'

* I felt, I felt, that in this townlet, save the water-gnats of Norway, was no living thing; that the hum and the savour of Eternity filled, and wrapped, and embalmed it.

And God was pleased at the faith of his servant, and he sent a gnat that vexed Nimrod day and night, so that he built himself a room of glass in that palace that he might dwell therein and shut out the insect.

Intellectualism, in short, strains off the gnat, but swallows the whole camel.

I went without so much as a cup of tea for twenty-four hours, watching my gnats, for fear the opening of the door should startle them.

The last attacker appeared a feeble gnat to dance thus alone in the eye of morning.

And now, as scorning to upbraid, With curving, parabolick smile, Contemptuous, eying him the while, His Rival thus: 'Twere vain, my Lord, To wound a gnat by spear or sword; If therefore I, of greater might, Would meet this thing in equal fight, 'Twere fit that I in size should be As mean, diminutive, as he; Of course, disdaining to reply, I pass the wretch unheeded by.

"But, Worth," she asked, when she had blinked the gnat away, "what did you tell this other man?" "Why, I just told him.