Why, my dear young friends, your fortune stares you in the face, and you have only to stretch out your hand and grasp it—no! I have made a mistake: you have a little more to do—you have, first, to learn your profession, which is no easy matter; and to enable you to do this, I intend writing the following book for the use of schools (which I herewith dedicate to the Head Masters of Eton, Harrow, Westminster, Rugby, and all other schools); but in placing this book on your school-desk, allow me to say that it is no good having it there through the long school hours unless you open it, read it, and deeply ponder over it; and more, my dear boys, let me pray that you will take it home with you, and, casting aside your usual holiday task, study it well, and, as far as possible, actively put in practice what I am going to try and teach you. Some fathers may wish their sons to enter on a more humble course of life, but this I rather doubt. However, should they do so, it will be only so much the better for those who take it up: there will be more room for them. Most mothers, I fear, will object to it on the ground that rats and ferrets don't smell nice; but this objection is not reasonable. They might as well say that the whiff of a fox on a soft December morning as you ride to covert is not delicious!
Respect your parents, respect even their prejudices; gently point out to your father that you are ambitious and wish for a career in which you can distinguish yourself. Above all, respect your mother, and show your respect by not taking ferrets or dead rats in your pockets into her drawing-room, and by washing your hands a little between fondling them and cuddling her. But to finish this sermon, let me point out that though in this great profession you will be everlastingly mixed up with dogs of all sorts, always make them come to you, and never go to them.
One last word. If in the following pages you come across a bit of grammar or spelling calculated to make a Head Master sit up, excuse it, and remember that I have been a rat-catcher all my life, and as a class we are not quite A1 at book learning.
STUDIES IN RAT CATCHING FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS.
[CHAPTER I.]
In the following elementary treatise for the use of public schools, I propose following exactly the same plan as my parson (a good fellow not afraid of a ferret or a rat) does with his sermons—that is, divide it into different heads, and then jumble up all the heads with the body, till it becomes as difficult to follow as a rat's hole in a soft bank; and, to begin with, I am going to talk about ferrets, for without them rat-catching won't pay.
Where ferrets first came from I am not sure, but somewhere I have read that they were imported from Morocco, and that they are not natives of Great Britain any more than the ordinary rat is. If they were imported, then that importer ranks in my mind with, but before, Christopher Columbus and all such travellers. Anyhow it is quite clear that nowhere in Great Britain are there wild ferrets, for they are as distinct from the stoat, the mouse-hunter, the pole-cat, etc., as I am from a Red Indian; and yet all belong to the same family, so much so that I have known of a marriage taking place between the ferret and pole-cat, the offspring of which have again married ferrets and in their turn have multiplied and increased, which is a proof that they are not mules, for the children of mules, either in birds or beasts, do not have young ones.