84 



THE RAT 



as the teeth catch you by the neck and choke the 

 very squeal in your throat. But I shall have more 

 to say about this common and ugly old trap when 

 I come to tell you of my own accident. 



The really interesting traps are those which are 

 invented by a man out of his own brain, and con- 

 structed by his own hands. Do not be surprised 

 at my admiration of such things. I hope that my 

 mind is broad enough to admire cleverness, even 

 when its object is my own destruction. Besides, 

 the cleverer the trap, the more credit a rat gets who 

 contrives to avoid falling into it, or running into it. 

 Both kinds of accident may happen. 



The thing which would really please me more 

 than anything else, if I could only be two people 

 at once, would be to be able to turn into a man, 

 and then try to trap my other self, which would 

 still be a clever old rat. Just think what fun you 

 could have on a wet day ! The man part of you 

 would shut himself up in a room, with plenty of 

 nice things to eat and drink, and would screw up 

 his forehead and think and think ever so hard, and 

 at last an idea would come into his head, and he 

 would rush out and get sticks and string and any- 

 thing else which formed part of his idea, and then 

 he would take his knife and get everything made 



