The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1892-02-19
NOT HIS LINE.
There Was a Limit to His Powers, and
He Found 1T.

He Found it.
A woman sat by the open basement
window of house in West Thirty-fifUh
street, when a man came along with
seven rat traTs and eight mouse traps
slung over his shoulder on cord. He
leaned on the fence, wiped his perspiring
brow with crippled handkerchief and
said:
Madam, no lengthy explanation is
demanded. | am selling mouse and rat
traps. My stock is right here. Sell you
a trap warranted to catch the cutest old
rat i'll New York city for quarter.
These mouse traps, warranted to entice
the most bashful mouse in the State to
his destruction, are only fifteen cents.
Might make the two thirty-tve cents to
you"
The woman was darning hole in the
heel of a long handled black stocking.
She darned and looked up and darned
and looked down, but she made no
reply: :,
tached one of the traps from the cord
and held it out, ''if you have no rats
| here you want no traps, but | take 1t you
have rats. We all have 'em. That 5
where the rich can get no advantage over
the poor. l don't say that it isn't
cheaper to lay for a rat with sled stake,
DuU 40 - '">"tt"" of convenience the trap
! is ahead. Savoy, ma am "
She looked up again, turned the stock
ing wrong side out and back, and said
nothing.
"a person not in the rat and mouse
business gives little or no thought to
statistics, continued the man, as he rested
one foot on the fence. "Have you any
idea of the appalling increase of the TO-
dent family? Probably not. | have
met poets, editors, financiers and states
men who had given it no thought. As a
matter of fact, ma'am, one pair of rats
will multiply themselves 1000 times III
two years. One thousand rats will con.
sumo an average of 5000 worth of pro
visions per year. One of my traps will
catch 1000 rats every 3G5 days. 1t is
therefore question of whether you vii
invest % cents or lose $1,000. Could
anything be palmer ma'am ?'
BY this time she had got through will
the hole in the heel and found one in the
toe of the stocking. She looked up al
him as she threaded the darning needle
again, but was silent.
Mind yOu,n said the man, after look
ing up and down the street, II don't say
that the rat shouldn't have show. He
was created for purpose, the same as
man, and simply because we happen tC
have the most intelligence we have NJ
right to Wipe him out of existence
What | do contend, however. is that III
must be kept within certain limits
Whenever, owing to numbers and rapa
ciousness, he becomes a menace to man
welfare, he must 60 to the wall. 1t i
with that end in view that rat traps wer
invented, and that | have come dow
from Yonkers to offer these traps at tn
low price of twenty-five cents each.
trust that l have defined my position
clearly, ma am"
She bit off the yarn close to the stock
ing, turned it right side out and passe,
her fingers over the spot, but her eye
were not even raised to his.
81 think | see how it is" he said, a
he refastened the trap to the cord an
prepared to move on. 81 think | do
You have not made finance and domes
tic economy a study. You look a
! twenty-five cents paid out for a rat ira
as so much capital invested in a nor
dividend paying investment You do nc
figger-"
At this juncture she rose up, laid tn
stocking aside, ana putting her neau OF
of the window until it was within fou
; feet of his she called out:
Don't want any We never buy pC
tatoes of peddlers anyhow
5 He stood and looked at her for mir
, ute with mouth wide open, and then, a
t the sash went down and the curtain wa
, drawn, he turned away with:
| "rll never make a Twin at it in tn
a world My line is windmills or SEWN
machines, or something that runs wit
: a drive wheel and does its own talking
Mem York Erening World.