CONCLUDING HINTS. 
273 
employ a professional man at a reasonable salary. But I 
do wish to impress it most emphatically on the minds of 
their sons, that the rat is the greatest enemy they have. I 
say their greatest enemy, because in too many cases it blights 
their hopes and prosperity by gradually devouring their 
fathers' substance, and thereby keeping them in continual 
needy circumstances, and, in too many cases, entirely beg- 
garing him. Therefore, I say, let the sons take example, 
and never do another day's work, or see their sweethearts, 
till they have destroyed every rat upon the farm. I have 
laid down the plans, plain and simple, — it now wants but 
the will ; and if their sweethearts be sensible girls, they 
will never grant them another favour or kiss till they have 
done their work of destruction right manfully, when, perhaps, 
they will pay them in full, both for yesterday and to-morrow. 
And now have the kindness to give Uncle James's 
best respects to your amiable wives and daughters, and tell 
them never to give you an hour's rest, night or day, till 
you have bestirred yourselves, and put an end to their 
privations, and, in too many cases, comparative poverty. 
Why should they be deprived of the little comforts of life, 
merely to feed a colony of hungry, destructive vermin ? 
Nay, more ; pray, what right have you to keep these 
animals, not only to destroy your own properties, but for 
the destruction of your wives' and daughters' Poultry also ? 
Put an end to this state of things, and then will your wives 
and daughters be able also to go with merry hearts to 
market, and buy of everything, even more than they want, 
out of the profits of their own poultry -yard. 
T 
