_Be it remembered_, that C. L. comes here and represents his relations;
that is to say, on behalf of the recollections, being the next of kin,
of him, the said C. L., and of sundry persons who are “aye treading” in
the manner of squirrels aforesaid; and thus he saith:--
_For the Every-Day Book._
What is gone with the Cages with the climbing Squirrel and bells to
them, which were formerly the indispensable appendage to the outside of
a Tinman’s shop, and were in fact the only Live Signs? One, we believe,
still hangs out on Holborn; but they are fast vanishing with the good
old modes of our ancestors. They seem to have been superseded by that
still more ingenious refinement of modern humanity--the Tread-mill; in
which _human_ Squirrels still perform a similar round of ceaseless,
improgressive clambering; which must be nuts to them.
We almost doubt the fact of the teeth of this creature being so purely
orange-coloured, as Mr. Urban’s correspondent gives out. One of our old
poets--and they were pretty sharp observers of nature--describes them as
brown. But perhaps the naturalist referred to meant “of the colour of a
Maltese orange,”[354] which is rather more obfuscated than your fruit of
Seville, or Saint Michael’s; and may help to reconcile the difference.
We cannot speak from observation, but we remember at school getting our
fingers into the orangery of one of these little gentry (not having a
due caution of the traps set there), and the result proved sourer than
lemons. The Author of the Task somewhere speaks of their anger as being
“insignificantly fierce,” but we found the demonstration of it on this
occasion quite as significant as we desired; and have not been disposed
since to look any of these “gift horses” in the mouth. Maiden aunts keep
these “small deer” as they do parrots, to bite people’s fingers, on
purpose to give them good advice “not to venture so near the cage
another time.” As for their “six quavers divided into three quavers and
a dotted crotchet,” I suppose, they may go into Jeremy Bentham’s next
budget of Fallacies, along with the “melodious and proportionable kinde
of musicke,” recorded in your last number of another highly gifted
animal.[355]