The funny man of the N.Y. Times, with evident personal malice, thus describes the vicious characteristics of the fly:
    Not only is the fly an intolerable bore, through his persistent presence where he is not wanted, and his offensive familiarity, but his habits are every way bad. As a "deadbeat" he has no rival in animated nature. He keeps all manner of late hours, and utterly disregards the laws of health and decency. He loafs about bar rooms, and partakes of free lunch without the least sense of shame or degradation. He eats and drinks of everything that can be eaten or drunken, and always at the expense of somebody else, and without the slightest show of gratitude.
    Filth is as attractive to him as elegance and luxury, and he has a most repulsive habit of exploring every accessible mass of pollution and straightway betaking himself to the unprotected cheek of beauty, or the delicious cates of fastidious epicure.
    He delights in tormenting man, from whose labors he derives his chief sustenance, and will take any mean advantage to give him annoyance. If his victim has the misfortune of having to part his hair with a towel, he will rally his forces and make the sensitive expense of the bald cranium a regular parade ground. He will pounce upon a man while he is helpless in a barber's chair, with his arms swathed beneath half a dozen yards of calico, and the perilous edge of a razor at his throat, and will harrow him almost to distraction. He will catch his victim in the act of taking, or trying to take, a nap, whether in the morning, as a fringe to the disturbed slumbers of the night, or after dinner, as a restoration from the cares of the day, and with maddening ingenuity will keep him from the desired boon, and bring him to a state where he is ready to accept the counsel of Job's wicked wife.
    And what are the consequences of the life of iniquity pursued by this depraved insect? Is retribution adequate to his offenses prepared for him either in this world or the world to come? On the theological branch of this injury we shall not presume to offer an opinion, but we are sure that he never comes by his full deserts here. He is idle, dissolute, gluttonous, pestiferous and tormenting, and yet he seems to pass his life gaily, free from care or trouble, and defiant of all laws, human and divine. He even defies the law of gravitation, and travels with equal ease in any direction, or on any surface not smeared with some treacherous stickiness. Apparently he enjoys complete immunity from the retribution which his conduct deserves, except when he is entrapped through his insatiable appetite into sloughs of poison or intricate traps from which he never escapes alive. We believe it is a fact that he never dies a natural death. No one ever knew a fly to be stricken down by disease, or to linger out a painful existence under medical treatment. Fevers and headaches are to him unknown, and he breathes contagion with perfect impunity. He sometimes falls a victim to his invincible curiosity or insatiable appetite, and is scalded in tea, drowned in milk, or smothered in molasses, and occasionally he is crushed or slaughtered as a penalty for his temerity, but he never dies of sickness or old age. Barring accident or violence, the fly is particularly immortal, a perennial nuisance, a standing example of total depravity, without, so far as we know, the eternal punishment which is its proper corollary.
Corvallis Gazette, September 27, 1878, page 1

    It became apparent by the time the last month of our nominal American spring was half gone that the year of which I write was to be cursed by a full "fly season." One week of unseasonably warm weather brought the buzzing horde out in force from the mysterious corners into which the dear old clean-out-of-fashion-and-out-of-mind "cobweb to catch flies" used to tell us the harmless little fly "crept to sleep all winter." In our home we burn the contents of our dust pans, and as winter shows signs of abdicating in favor of beauteous spring, we redouble our zeal in sweeping rooms and suspicious examination of carpet edges. Rugs are shaken harder and oftener, closets inspected, and their contents sifted rigorously. The dogma that with the fluff collected by the broom go into the fire the eggs of house flies, the larvae of moths, etc., is held in cheerful sincerity of belief. Not that we--or any of our acquaintances--ever saw a house fly egg (genus Musca). But, reasoning from analogy, we assume that this is the Muscan method of reproduction illimitable, of maddening multiplication.
    In this fateful year Tyndall's fascinating treatise on "Dust and Disease" had been read in our home circle, and, as a consequence, a mild craze on the subject of bacteria and infusoria possessed most of us. Spontaneous generation was demonstrated by our author to be an exploded myth. Upon housewifely fidelity depended the health and comfort of the family. Where no dust was, disease germs were nil. When our round of exploration was ended we hugged ourselves in the conviction that not a loophole remained unguarded.
    The hot spell of May awoke us rudely from our dream of security. If frogs had hopped into our kneading troughs, or hailstones, and fire that ran along the ground swept our thoroughfares, we could hardly have been more confounded than by ocular proof that Musca ova by the tens of thousands had lain untouched by broom or duster in more than ever mysterious "corners," and had awakened at the call of the south wind along with the violets, tulips and spring bonnets. Disdainful of larval and polliwog precedent, each of the myriads, for all we could see to the contrary, was hatched full grown, with more than the regulation number of legs and a "staying power" of voracity that would have done credit to a condor. They descended and ascended upon us, terrible as an army with banners and bagpipes. The hum above our tables, their titillating touch upon noses and lips in what we could not call sleeping rooms after daylight--were tease and torment; the foray of legions in the kitchen was disgust and desperation.
    Flies and dirt--seen or unseen--are too closely joined together in the housekeeper's mind to be put asunder while reason endures. The domestic brigade sprang to arms. Fly doors were hung in all the portals that opened into the outer world; wire screens fitted into every window; rooms that have always been clean were subjected to such scouring and brushing and burnishing as raised them above hypercritical suspicion; cool dusks reigned throughout the house while the sun was above the horizon. Each morning the brigade, armed with palm leaf fans and damp towels, charged upon the winged battalions, beat out all that could be expelled from the fort, then massacred the stragglers. Each day, forgetful of the past disappointment, we panted that at last victory had perched upon our dusters. In half an hour into library, sewing room, most of all kitchen and dining room, stole the shrill droning of a hundred tiny bagpipes, the slogan of a reconstructed host. We had met the enemy and were, as usual, theirs.
    The balloon-shaped fly trap made of wire netting set above a saucer containing a seductive mixture of treacle and pepper slow its thousands. We gave them the benefit of no probability of actual decrease, but cremated the mass, animated and inanimate, "in one red burial blent" in the kitchen grate. Drowned flies, buried flies, flies that have been stunned and crushed come to life. The tenacity with which they hold to a vampire-like existence is as miraculous as their incubation in "corners" nobody ever finds. They are never fairly dead except in the shape of cold ashes.
    The Pittsfield clockwork fly trap revolved by day and night and slew its ten thousands, until it seemed as if the number consumed must make an appreciable difference in the quantity of fuel used per diem.
    And still the buzz and tickling and swarming went on. We inhaled no air save such as was strained through reticulated wire, but the mustering of the Musca myriad was as if the filtered element had taken visible and auricular life. The plague was phenomenal. Where did they come from? What did their appearance and sojourn portend? We were ashamed with a humiliation every properly trained housewife will comprehend. But for the danger to surrounding buildings it is possible that we might have lent obedient heed to the proposition of the chief of our clan and burned down the house to get rid of the flies.
    To us, in extremity, drifted a newspaper scrap which was neither official nor judicial. Somebody picked it up somewhere. A drowning man would have caught at it, as did we, had it bobbed at him from the crest of a wave. It was not quite explicit in the directions it conveyed, but we got at the meaning of the extract and put it into practice as follows: We had Persian insect powder in the house, also the implement, in shape like a big hunting watch, with a small pipe let into one side, with which we had projected the yellow dust into corners where might lurk the eggs or pupae of moths. This we charged to the nozzle. That night kitchen and dining room were cleared of such small articles as would have to be washed if the powder fell on them; windows and doors were made fast, and an operator, standing in the middle of the floor, worked the spring top of the round case that expelled the powder, throwing it upward at an angle of forty-five degrees, toward every corner and side of the apartment. We used a boxful in each room, then half as much on each succeeding occasion. The rooms were not entered again until morning.
    Cook declared that she swept up "a full pint of the little bastes [beasts]." The waitress did not measure her trophies, but reported that floor and furniture were strewn with bodies. It was a miniature edition of the destruction of Sennacherib by an unseen agent. To make sure that our foes were, like his army, all dead corpses, we consigned them without delay to the crematory.
    This was done on Saturday night, and ineffable peace reigned over our Sunday breakfast.
    "It is too good to be true!" said one. "I am reverently thankful. I have felt for weeks as if the shadow of Moses' rod rested on our house."
    Another--"The marvel is that Pharaoh hardened his heart again. I have less respect for his common sense than ever before."
    Still another--"One text runs in my mind continually: 'They did take their food with gladness and singleness of heart.'"
    Toward evening the vanquished leaders sent in scouts, few in number and wary, to reconnoiter the battlefield. A repetition of the experience of the preceding evening left not one to carry the tale.
    If I have told it lightly it is not because the infliction was not grievous and the deliverance welcome beyond expression. Since then we have held our own successfully in the height of "fly time." In every hot weather the powder is used every night for a week or two at a time; in ordinary circumstances, and by observing common precaution in the matter of screen doors and darkened rooms, twice or three times a week, suffices to keep the premises clear. While the remedy leaves no trace of its recent presence to sight or smell after the floor is swept and the furniture dusted, we have not thought it prudent to use it in bed chambers. But we have learned that kitchen and dining room are the enemy's headquarters, and that heroic measures here cut off supplies from the upper part of the house.
    I shall esteem myself happy if this humble sketch may be the means of extending the knowledge of a device so simple, yet efficacious, in abating one of the most common nuisances of daily life in summer weather.
Sunday Oregonian, Portland, May 30, 1886, page 1  The writer was living in Brooklyn.

    Boston Herald: Flies are now recognized as common carriers of contagion. It has been found that the bacillus of consumption may exist in the intestines of flies fed upon the sputa of patients suffering from this disease. What is known as granular ophthalmia can be conveyed by these insects. The writer has had experience in a case of malignant pustule which formed on the spot bitten by a horsefly. It has been said that the late Father Damien attributed his leprosy to the inoculation, through the agency of flies, of a small wound on the scalp. A large number of "proof positive" instances have been distributed by these little insects. To escape them entirely one must go out to sea, but on land they are the least troublesome where there is the least filth. Cleanliness in home and premises, therefore, is an important means of prevention against these intruders.
Daily Inter Ocean, Chicago, June 16, 1890, page B9