HOUSEHOLD PESTS 



ANTIPATHY, and not fear, is, according to Dr 

 Johnson, the basis of that horror to which most 

 persons are willing to admit themselves subject 

 in touching, or even seeing, the ' noisome beasts ' 

 which in various forms combine to form the in- 

 truding army which invades the houses of civilised 

 man. One of his acquaintances, to whom we are 

 introduced in the pages of the Rambler, was free 

 to confess that he could not see a rat, even when 

 dead, without palpitating ; and another threw his 

 reputation for courage at the feet of his mistress, 

 unless she could condone the fact that ' among all 

 the animals upon which Nature has impressed 

 deformity and horror, there was none that he durst 

 not encounter rather than a beetle/ 



Those who share the feelings of repulsion so 

 magnificently expressed by the great master of 

 Ciceronian English, will not notice without a qualm 



, the accounts of the recent surprising increase in the 



256 



