“It has come to the knowledge of the writer that one of your amusements here is to worry cats,—that you buy them from those owners who can be tempted to the sin of selling them for such a purpose, and that you employ boys to steal them for you.
“A woman who was asked by her neighbour how she could do so wicked a thing as to sell her cat to you, made answer that she never would have done it, if she could have saved the poor creature; but that if she had not sold it, it would have been stolen by your agents, and therefore she might as well have the half-crown herself.
“Neither her poverty nor her will consented; yet she
was made to partake in your wickedness because she could not prevent it. She
gave up to your barbarity a domestic animal—a fire-side companion, with
which her children had played, and which she
| 238 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 58. |
“Are you incapable, young gentlemen, of understanding the injury you have done to this woman in her own conscience, and in the estimation of her neighbours?
“Be this as it may, you cannot have been so ill taught as not to know that you are setting an evil example in a place to which you have come for the ostensible object of pursuing your studies in a beautiful country; that your sport is as blackguard as it is brutal; that cruelty is a crime by the laws of God, and theft by the laws also of man; that in employing boys to steal for you, and thus training them up in the way they should not go, you are doing the devil’s work; that they commit a punishable offence when serving you in this way, and that you commit one in so employing them.
“You are hereby warned to give up these practices. If you persist in them, this letter will be sent to all the provincial newspapers.”
