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Updated: May 13, 2025
I have detected him once or twice attempting to sound my thoughts, and watch the expression of my countenance. He has talked of the flageolet more than once, and has, at different times, made eulogiums upon the watchfulness and ferocity of his dogs, and the regularity with which the keeper makes his rounds with a loaded fowling-piece. He mentioned even man-traps and springguns.
Where the parkland ended and the woods began it was impossible to make out, but away to my left I could follow the high wall to where, clearly visible in the moonlight which at this point was unobstructed by trees, a gate appeared. Towards this I made my way, keeping a sharp lookout for those man-traps of which I had heard, and equally on the alert for any hidden human presence.
There still remain in many old houses collections of armour that bears the dints of many fights. Swords, helmets, shields, lances, and other weapons of warfare often are seen hanging on the walls of an ancestral hall. The buff coats of Cromwell's soldiers, tilting-helmets, guns and pistols of many periods are all there, together with man-traps the cruel invention of a barbarous age.
He has taken an old country-seat, and refitted it; and painted and plastered it, until it looks not unlike his own manufactory. He has been particularly careful in mending the walls and hedges, and putting up notices of spring-guns and man-traps in every part of his premises.
Practically, man-traps were not always a success. The intensive bombardments which precede infantry attacks play havoc with entanglements, but there is always a chance of the destruction being incomplete, as upon one occasion farther north, where, Shorty told me, a man-trap caught a whole platoon of Germans "dead to rights." "But this is wot gives you the pip," he said.
We have gone through our share of flirtation in this life: match-making mothers, prying aunts, choleric uncles, benevolent and open-hearted fathers, we understand to the life, and care no more for such man-traps than a Melton man, well mounted on his strong-boned thorough-bred, does for a four-barred ox-fence that lies before him.
The word "Private" painted up anywhere does the effect of bolts and bars and of all obsolete man-traps beyond it, and is not for a moment that challenge to the wayfaring foot which it seems so often with us; but the warnings to the public which we make so mandatory, the English language with unfailing gentleness.
On the other side, for uniformity's sake, was a precautionary annunciation of spring-guns and man-traps of such formidable powers that, said the rubrick, with an emphatic nota bene 'if a man goes in they will break a horse's leg.
The incredible variety and ludicrous combinations of goods to be met with in one of these southern shops beats the stock of your village omnium-gatherum hollow to be sure, one class of articles, and that probably the most in demand here, is not sold over any counter in Massachussetts cow-hides, and man-traps, of which a large assortment enters necessarily into the furniture of every southern shop.
But no one should be taught to consider them valuable for mere parade and attraction. Making the education of girls such a series of 'man-traps, makes the whole system unhealthy, by poisoning the motive.
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