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I cannot goodly determine what I should most abhor, detest, loathe, and abominate, whether the tyrannical presumption of those dreaded sacerdotal mole-catchers, who, not being willing to contain and coop up themselves within the grates and trellises of their own mysterious temples, do deal in, meddle with, obtrude upon, and thrust their sickles into harvests of secular businesses quite contrary and diametrically opposite to the quality, state, and condition of their callings, professions, and vocations; or the superstitious stupidity and senseless scrupulousness of married folks, who have yielded obedience, and submitted their bodies, fortunes, and estates to the discretion and authority of such odious, perverse, barbarous, and unreasonable laws.
The pride of rustic life is the child's form of caste-feeling. The country child is the aristocrat; he has des relations suivies with game-keepers, nay, with the most interesting mole-catchers. He has a perfectly self-conscious joy that he is not in a square or a suburb. No essayist has so much feeling against terraces and villas.
The stick itself, rising above the grass, is visible at some distance, and when thrown it holds the hare or rabbit up for any one to see that passes by. With a wire set in the present manner the captured animal lies extended, and often rolls into a furrow and is further hidden. The springe was probably last employed by the mole-catchers.
Their wooden traps were in the shape of a small tunnel, with a wire in the middle which, when the mole passed through, set free a bent stick. This stick pulled the wire and hung the mole. Such mole-catchers' bows or springes used to be seen in every meadow, but are now superseded by the iron trap. Springes with horsehair nooses on the ground were also set for woodcocks and for wild ducks.
All mole-catchers will bear testimony to the rapid movements and consequent difficulty of catching these animals. I have watched a gardener stand for half an hour by one of the little hillocks of loose earth, which, from its movement, showed that the mole was there at work, and remain motionless, spade in hand, and when he saw the earth shake, dash his weapon into the heap.
Marry, said Jupiter, we are finely helped up, as if we had now nothing else to do here but to restore lost hatchets. The truth is, the fellow's hatchet is as much to him as a kingdom to a king. Come, come, let no more words be scattered about it; let him have his hatchet again. Now, let us make an end of the difference betwixt the Levites and mole-catchers of Landerousse. Whereabouts were we?
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