SCENE I.

A DINING-ROOM MODESTLY FURNISHED.

GNAWER _alone, coming and going, seemingly much preoccupied_.

My pupil Trotter is coming to share my dinner. I hope he may find no cause to regret his old master’s invitation [_smelling an old piece of cheese he found under the table_]. There now is a bit of cheddar whose delicious perfume would make a dead rat come to life! We shall hear what my pupil thinks of it. The rats of the rising generation are so strange they seem to care for nothing. Nothing pleases them, or dispels the frown they constantly wear. In my young days we were less fastidious, we took things as they came. One day we dined off corn, another off wood—wood or corn, it was all the same to us. Now, alas! all is changed. There is no contentment. If my pupils have bacon and nuts, they lament the absence of cheese. What is the world coming to? Trotter is late, I wonder if anything has happened to him. {99}