Rats is radiants and the little ones is a mouse, and thats the feller which pursues the women folks up into a high tree and blankets on her blood! But the old he rat eats bread and cheese like a thing of life. One day my mother she baited a trap with Dutch cheese, for to catch a rat. My father he looked on a while, and then he said, my father did: “I guess there isnt any doubt about the rat finding that deadly invention if he follers his nose, and I foresee his finish, but what is the trap for?” Rats is two kinds, the common and the mush. The common is the scourge of the world, but the mush he lives in the water and is highly respected. The fur of the mush is a article of commerce and keeps your hands warm when winter stalks abroad like a devouring kangaroon. If I was a mush I would keep my fur for my own self and say: “You fool humans can stay in the house and stand by the fire.” But Uncle Ned he says that would be bad for athletical sports, why not let them go out of doors, but keep their hands in one a others pockets as usual? He says one time in Arizona there was a show, and the show man he stood in the door of his tent and hollored: “Walk up, walk up, ladies and gents, and see the fierce Canadian beaver, which is the 8th wonder of the world and the anchor of hope to them which is afflicted with the dumps. He roams the rivers of the frozen north, from Dan Couvers island to Sammy Quoddys bay in the state of Maine, and his voice is ever for war. When he throws his eye upon a tree the doom of that monarch of the forest primeval is sealed, its caroar at a end and its name a by word in the mouths of men, for he ganaws it down while you wait, and as it thunders to earth he raises the song of triump and lashes the air to foam! His house is fathoms five under the glad waters of the deep blue sea, and the steam boats pass above him as he pursues the evil tenor of his way, in maiden meditation, fancy free. At midnights holy hour he arises to the surface for to communicate with his kindreds in a far country, and the slap of his powerful tail is heard around the world. The dams which he builds with his teeths and feets turns aside the Father of Waters, and mighty cities are with the eternal past! Yet this wonder worker is endowered with a domestical mind and a sociable dispusition, and he is never so happy as when surounded by such friendly and congenual spirits as I see before me, generously eager for to cheer him in his campaign of education. Walk up, walk up, only fifty cents for to bring the balm of Gulliad to this lonely exiles heart.” I asked Uncle Ned was it a mush rat, and he said, Uncle Ned did: “I dont know, Johnny, I dont know. I hadnt time to go in and cheer up the lonely exile, for having the misfortune to wear a stopipe hat and look like maybe I would steal horses, I feared that if I went in the show I might be too much absorbed in admiration to the beaver to mark the laps of time, and would be late at the boundry.”