“Certainly not,” said the doctor. “And besides, you give the plant back, about those wonderful imbibers—its roots—the concentrated essence of all that it has lost, in the shape of slug.”
“Is this meant for a joke, Doctor Scales?”
“Not in the least, my dear madam. By the way, though, our friend Mr Arthur Prayle would give us a lecture on cruelty, if he saw us rejoicing over the death of our molluscous enemies here.”
“Mr Arthur Prayle had better mind his accounts,” said the lady shortly; “he knows nothing about gardening.”
“No; I do not think he does,” said the doctor, as the old lady routed out another slug, cut it in three, and buried it viciously—just as if she were operating on Arthur Prayle.
“It seems to amuse you,” said Aunt Sophia.
“Amuse me? Well, it does look rather droll,” replied the doctor; “but it can’t be pleasant for the slugs.”
“Then the slugs had better emigrate,” said Aunt Sophia sharply. “I don’t want to see my poor nephew’s garden go to rack and ruin.”
Doctor Scales went off as Aunt Sophia resumed her task, and, as was often his habit, began to work out a discourse upon what he had seen. Starting with the text, “Is it cruel to kill slugs,” and it was somewhat after this fashion that he mused: “Is it cruel to kill slugs? Just stand with upraised foot before one of those slimy, moist, elongated bags of concentrated cabbage, cauliflower, choice plant, and tender cucumber, and answer that question if you can.
“Now, letting slimy slugs alone, and speaking as a humble-minded individual whose profession it is to save life, I want to know whether it is cruel to kill the myriad of teeming creatures that throng this earth. With sportsmen I have nothing to do. I speak from a simple horticultural point of view, and want to know whether I am justified in destroying life. To begin with, I am a teeming creature on the surface of the earth and I don’t want anybody to kill me. It would be far from pleasant to my feelings to be cut in two with a spade; to be crushed into an unpleasant mass by a broad foot; to be salted till I writhed and melted away; to be shot at with guns; caught in traps; killed with lime besprinkled upon me quick: or poisoned with deadly drugs. Yet I openly confess that I have been guilty of all these crimes. I might, in fact, have called this ‘The Recollections of a Murderer,’ so bestained are my hands in innocent blood of red and green and other colours. Certainly I might do the dirty work in a vicarious way by bringing into the garden a very serious-looking young drake, who makes no more ado about swallowing great earthworms by the yard than he does of devouring slugs by the quart, but that is a sneaking, underhanded way that I do not approve. I should feel like a Venetian noble who has hired a bravo to use his stiletto upon some obnoxious friend; and besides, if I did, the shadow of those murders would come like Banquo’s ghost to sit at my table when the aforesaid serious-looking young drake and a brother graced the board in company with a goodly dish of green peas, and seemed to murmur of the slugs and worms he had slain at my command. And there it is again—wholesale murder. I was guilty vicariously of the death of those ducks; I slew the sparrows who came to eat the peas; and, to go further, did I not kill the peas?