rliest recollection is of running about in a shed adjoining a
large warehouse, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Poplar, and close to
the River Thames, which thereabouts is certainly no silver stream.

A merry life we led of it in that shed, my seven brothers and I! It was
a sort of palace of rubbish, a mansion of odds and ends, where rats
might frolic and gambol, and play at hide-and-seek, to their hearts'
content. We had nibbled a nice little way into the warehouse above
mentioned; and there, every night, we feasted at our ease, growing as
sleek and plump as any rats in the United Kingdom.

We were of an ancient race of British rats, my seven brothers and I. It
is said that our ancestors came over with the Conqueror, William; and we
are not a little proud of our Norman descent. Our smaller forms, sleek
black coats, long tails, and fine large ears, make us altogether
distinct from the Norwegian brown rat, on which we look with-- I was
going to say with contempt, but I rather think that it is quite another
feeling, and one to which neither rats nor men generally like to plead
guilty. I know that we do not usually choose to keep company with them;
but whether it be because their forms are coarser, their manners less
refined, and their pedigree not so long, or whether it be because they
sometimes have a fancy to nibble off the ears of their neighbours, or,
when their appetite is uncommonly sharp, make a meal of their Norman
cousins, we need not particularly inquire.

I said that I and my seven brothers were black rats; but I ought to make
one exception. The youngest of the family was piebald-- a curious
peculiarity, which I never noticed in any other of our race. Yes, he was
piebald; and not only had he this misfortune, but he was the clumsiest
and most ill-shaped rat that ever nibbled a candle-end! Now, this was no
fault of his, and certainly was no reason why he should have been
despised by his more fortunate brothers. Man, of course, as a superior
creature, would only look with kindness and pity upon a companion so
unhappy as to have personal defects. He would never ridicule a condition
which might have been his own, nor find a subject for merriment
in that which to another was a cause of annoyance; but we were only
inconsiderate young rats, and there was no end to our jokes on
our piebald comrade. "Oddity," "Guinea-pig," "Old Spotty," and
"Frightful"-- such were the names which we gave him. The first was that by
whi