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"Ah!" said Spot. "Don't forget that I drive the cows and watch the house and the barns at night. And during my spare moments I hunt woodchucks. You couldn't expect a person of my importance to fritter away his valuable time catching mice. Mousetraps couldn't do my work," old dog Spot continued. "There never was a mousetrap made that could drive a cow."
Here is a boy that loves to run, swim, kick football, turn somersets, make faces, whittle, fish, tear his clothes, coast, skate, fire crackers, blow squash "tooters," cut his name on fences, read about Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the Sailor, eat the widest-angled slices of pie and untold cakes and candies, crack nuts with his back teeth and bite out the better part of another boy's apple with his front ones, turn up coppers, "stick" knives, call names, throw stones, knock off hats, set mousetraps, chalk doorsteps, "cut behind" anything on wheels or runners, whistle through his teeth, "holler" Fire! on slight evidence, run after soldiers, patronize an engine-company, or, in his own words, "blow for tub No. 11," or whatever it may be; isn't that a pretty nice sort of a boy, though he has not got anything the matter with him that takes the taste of this world out?
To call him an historian is to knight a mandrake; 'tis to view him through a perspective, and by that gross hyperbole to give the reputation of an engineer to a maker of mousetraps. Such an historian would hardly pass muster with a Scotch stationer in a sieveful of ballads and godly books. He would not serve for the breast-plate of a begging Grecian.
As a rule, suspected criminals, whether they are to be subjected to a preliminary examination to "go up," in the slang of the Courts or to appear before the magistrate of the lower Court, are transferred in prison vans direct to the "mousetraps."
The invention of the mousetrap does not date from our days; as soon as societies, in forming, had invented any kind of police, that police invented mousetraps. As perhaps our readers are not familiar with the slang of the Rue de Jerusalem, and as it is fifteen years since we applied this word for the first time to this thing, allow us to explain to them what is a mousetrap.
And since no Sarkian woman under any conceivable circumstances would annoy her lordly master with demands to produce better mousetraps, household gadgetry, and more money, the technological development of Sark had come to a virtual standstill. It took two sexes to develop a civilization. Kennon shrugged.
My second family name, Nessi, as I have said before, comes out of Lombardy and the city of Como. The Nessis of Como fled from Austrian rule, and came to Spain, probably peddling mousetraps and santi boniti barati.
The "mousetraps" end on the north at the quay, on the east at the headquarters of the Municipal Guard, on the west at the courtyard of the Conciergerie, and on the south they adjoin a large vaulted hall, formerly, no doubt, the banqueting-room, but at present disused.
Here is a boy that loves to run, swim, kick football, turn somersets, make faces, whittle, fish, tear his clothes, coast, skate, fire crackers, blow squash "tooters," cut his name on fences, read about Robinson Crusoe and Sinbad the Sailor, eat the widest-angled slices of pie and untold cakes and candies, crack nuts with his back teeth and bite out the better part of another boy's apple with his front ones, turn up coppers, "stick" knives, call names, throw stones, knock off hats, set mousetraps, chalk doorsteps, "cut behind" anything on wheels or runners, whistle through his teeth, "holler" Fire! on slight evidence, run after soldiers, patronize an engine-company, or, in his own words, "blow for tub No. 11," or whatever it may be; isn't that a pretty nice sort of a boy, though he has not got anything the matter with him that takes the taste of this world out?
The pale-faced young woman boasted of an advanced soul and was making a snug bank account from the rich set in undertaking occult analyses of their names by which to decide whether or not the accompanying astral vibrations harmonized with their auras; and if they did not and were therefore detrimental and hampering to spiritual development and material progress she would evolve occult names for them which would be sort of spiritual bits of cheese in material mousetraps baiting and capturing all the good things of this world and the next.
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