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CHAPTER XYI.^ 
HATS AS HUMAN FOOD. 
In treating on a subject so generally viewed witli feelings 
of disgust, let us, by way of preliminary, only imagine Sir 
J ohn bringing over from Paris a cage full of sewer rats, for 
the entertainment of Lady Pattle's friends and acquaintances; 
and that no less a personage than M. Soyer, the celebrated 
Crimean chef, should be employed to kill, skin, cook, and 
serve them up to table. But from imagination let us turn 
to the realities of life. 
Strange and revolting as the above might appear, yet if 
Lady Rattle had had rats for dinner, she would not have 
been singular ; for, if chroniclers and travellers report truly, 
there are very large portions of the human family who 
esteem rats not only as a necessary of life, but a great 
delicacy. Among them there are the whole of the Chinese, 
and many natives of the East Indies, besides the tribes of 
Africa, and the natives and more civilized freed slaves at 
Sierra Leone. Then there are some islands in the Pacific, 
where the only animals the natives have to live upon are 
pigs and rats. Then we find that the humbler classes and 
iazaroni of Naples, and the chiffonniers of Paris, indulge in 
them as an article of food ; and, to bring the matter nearer 
home, there is Mr. Wilkie Collins's account of the good 
people of East and West Looe, Cornwall ; besides some 
persons at Hanwell, and a host of individual cases too nume- 
rous to mention. 
My readers may wonder what I am driving at, and whether 
I am going to set them to eating rats ? In reply, they will 
allow me to tell my tale my own way, and we shall arrive 
much sooner at a conclusion. There are some things in this 
world rendered so hideous by misconception, that to expose 
them suddenly to the caprices of imagination would be to 
bring on an instantaneous fit of swooning ; but as I have no 
desire to see such unhappy consequences, I shall strive to 
unfold the various subjects with all the modesty and gentle- 
