“A huge pile of dirty-looking sacks, filled with some fibrous material, which bore a resemblance to superannuated horse-hair, or frowsy elongated wool, or anything unpleasant or unattractive, was landed in Liverpool. When these queer-looking bales had first arrived, or by what vessel brought, or for what purpose intended, the very oldest warehousemen in Liverpool docks couldn’t say. There had once been a rumour—a mere warehouseman’s rumour—that the bales had been shipped from South America, on ‘spec.,’ and consigned to the agency of C. W. and F. Foozle and Co. But even this seems to have been forgotten, and it was agreed upon by all hands, that the three hundred and odd sacks of nondescript hair-wool were a perfect nuisance. The rats appeared to be the only parties who approved at all of the importation, and to them it was the finest investment for capital that had been known in Liverpool since their first ancestors had emigrated thither. Well, these bales seemed likely to rot, or fall to the dust, or be bitten up for the particular use of family rats. Merchants would have nothing to say to them. Dealers couldn’t make them out. Manufacturers shook their heads at the bare mention of them; while the agents of C. W. and F. Foozle and Co. looked at the bill of lading—had once spoken to their head clerk about shipping them to South America again. “One day—we won’t care what day it was, or even what week or month it was, though things of far less consequence have been chronicled to the half-minute—one day, a plain business-looking young man, with an intelligent face and quiet reserved manner, was walking along through these same warehouses in Liverpool, when his eye fell upon some of the superannuated horse-hair projecting from one of the ugly dirty bales. Some lady-rat, more delicate than her neighbours, had found it rather coarser than usual, and had persuaded her lord and master to eject the portion from her resting-place. Our friend took it up, looked at it, felt at it, rubbed it, pulled it about; in fact, he did all but taste it; and he would have done that if it had suited his purpose—for he was ‘Yorkshire.’ Having held it up to the light, and held it away from the light, and held it in all sorts of positions, and done all sorts of cruelties to it, as though it had been his most deadly enemy, and he was feeling quite vindictive, he placed a handful or two in his pocket, and walked calmly away, evidently intending to put the stuff to some excruciating private torture at home. What particular experiments he tried with this fibrous substance I am not exactly in a position to state, nor does it much signify; but the sequel was that the same quiet business-looking young man was seen to enter the office of C. W. and F. Foozle and Co., and ask for the head of the firm.