Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

The Montreal Witness contains the following: Yesterday evening a reporter for a morning contemporary was engaged writing up his items, when he suddenly and quite unintentionally furnished an item himself. He was so engrossed in describing the mysteries of the Police court, that he did not notice an ancient and wise-looking rat who was out on a prospecting tour, and was examining minutely the mud about the bottom of the reporter’s pantaloons. The mud seemed of good quality, and the rat began to nibble it; the reporter became conscious of something unusual going on about his pedal extremities, and gave a kick, when the trouble began. The rat made a spring and commenced a voyage up the leg of the reporter’s pantaloons; the reporter gave a jump and a howl of astonishment, upset his chair, nearly overturning the table, and yelling thieves, while the rat squealed murder as plainly as a rat can. The rat continued his explorations until the pantaloons got too tight for him to go higher. Then he took a good hold of the reporter’s thigh, and the reporter took a good grip on him and began to dance. The reporter is an exemplary young man, and is not given to Terpsichorean exercises; but when the compositors and clerks from the business office, attracted by his cries, entered the room, they found him cutting such fantastic capers that they thought he was either crazy, or was practicing a new fling for the St. Andrew’s Society ball. Still the rat held on, and still the reporter kept his grip. The situation was becoming serious. How was the rat to be got out? At last a brilliant idea struck the reporter. He began to take off his pantaloons, still holding the rat, and, when he had removed them, a general onslaught was made on the unfortunate rodent, and he was quickly dispatched, a compositor almost decapitating him with a column ruler.