Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

     The North China Herald says that a curious phenomenon was witnessed recently at daybreak upon the opening of the Chlangmen gate of Soochow. Some 4,000 or more rats of all sizes were seen to file out of the gates, showing no fear of the country people who were flocking to sell their market produce in the city. There is much excitement amounting almost to a panic, therefore, in Soochow, and a dire fate is prophesied to the city, it being remembered that a similar exodus happened in the ’50s, just prior to the fall of the city into the hands of the Taiping rebels.