RATS AND MICE.
Why should we not, like Grainger, begin this section as the writer of "The Sugar-Cane" does one of his paragraphs—
"Come muse! let's sing of rats."
The "restless rottens" and mice need little introduction. They are a most fertile race, and some species of them seem only to be in human habitations. They are terrible nuisances, and yet rat-skins are said to be manufactured in Paris into gloves.
Sydney Smith's comparison of some one dying like a poisoned rat in a ditch is a powerful one. The same writer, in hunting down an unworthy man, with his cutting criticism, says, that he did it not on account of his power, but to put down what might prove noisome if not settled, much as a Dutch burgomaster might hunt a rat, not for its value, but because by its boring it might cause the water to break through his dikes, and thus flood his native land.
Robert Browning, in one of his poems, "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," has powerfully described an incursion of rats. A few lines may be quoted:—
"Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.
"Rats!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in their cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook's own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men's Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women's chats,
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.
"And ere three shrill notes the pipes had uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered;
And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling—
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats;
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails, and pricking whiskers,
Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives—
Followed the Piper for their lives.
From street to street he piped, advancing,
And step for step they followed dancing,
Until they came to the river Weser
Wherein all plunged and perished,
Save one."