THE BABBIT. 



the misery this doctrine has brought on rabbitkind P No one 

 but the endurers of the misery. Oh ! how the above-men- 

 tioned matronly doe, who through her long life had reared 

 great troops of sons and daughters in the wretchedest of 

 houses — some old tea-ohest, or abandoned portmanteau, or 

 leaky tub— how she would astound many a rabbit-keeping boy 

 by a recital of her wrongs ! How, if she were an eloquent doe, 

 she would overwhelm, him with shame and remorse by the 

 narrative of her life-loT\g troubles ! I think I hear her : " My 

 dear young master, blame not me that I am lean or that my 

 little ones are few in number and pot-bellied. The fault Ues 

 with yourself. Doubtless you consider mine a very comfort- 

 able abode, but then you are a strong robust boy, and incapable 

 of taJring a rabbit's-eye view of the case. Comibitablfe ! Why, 

 my house is wretched. How would you like to live in such an 

 one P How would you like to sleep in an apartment through 

 the chinks of the walls of which the wind came whistling through 

 with force enough to turn the sails of a windmill, and through 

 the roof of which, in wet weather, the rain came drip, drip, 

 patter, patter, spoiling the snug bed you had made for your 

 helpless little family, and wetting their naked little bodies, and 

 giving them snuffles in such a shocking way that it goes to 

 one's heart to hear their troubled breathing P How wotdd you 

 like to be pent up, as many of us are, in a damp wash-house, 

 shivering with cold during si: days, and parboiled and steamed 

 on the seventh, that is, on washing-day ? How would you 

 like to be condemned to perpetual imprisonment in a dark, 

 draughty, ill-drained den, with no ventilation, and about the 

 same amount of drainage ? All these things I am compelled 

 to endure, and at the same time expected to be joUy and grow 

 fat, to be the most fniitfol of mothers, and the most unexcep- 

 tionable of nurses. It can't be done, my master. It can no 

 more be accomplished than you yourself could be sleek and 

 jolly, Uving in a tool-shed, and subsisting entirely on green 

 stuff." 



Nothing can be more fallacious than the doctrine that every- 

 body knows how to knock up a rabbit-hutch. It simply means 

 that any sort of box with four sides and a roof and a floor, is 

 good enough for a rabbit to live in. This, however, is so con- 

 traiy to common sense, to say nothing of common humanity, 

 that it is past argument. " Anything " wiH not do for a 

 rabbit-house, and a rabbit wiU no more thrive in a crazy, ugly 

 box, than a canary would sing if housed in an old hat, or im> 



