The snapshot was overexposed, giving its subjects a too-bright, washed out appearance.

The vote was taken at once, and it was agreed by an overwhelming majority that rats were comrades. There were only four dissentients, the three dogs and the cat, who was afterwards discovered to have voted on both sides.

As I tried to catch the words which the stoutly-fashioned floor so bafflingly intercepted, I was also conscious of a great deal of stirring and scratching and shuffling in the room below; so that I could not escape the impression that it was full of living beings—many more than the few whose speech I could single out.

It is not therefore the design of this Chapter to uncover the nakedness of our Fathers, so as to expose it to the petulancy of any, but rather to congratulate those further accessions of light and improvements in knowledge, which these latter Ages have attained unto, and to celebrate the wisdom and goodness of the great Creator, who hath not been so liberal in his impartments to our Progenitours, but that he hath reserved something wherewith to gratifie the modest inquiries, and industrious researches of after-times.