IN THE MATTER OF O'REILLY 



Yet unwelcome as he was, scald, ungainly, tiresome, there 



was something pathetic about the creature. He had a 



way of looking at one, deprecating and pleading 



at once/ and he would display such rapture at 



the smallest token of toleration, that, despite 



our satisfaction at his departure, we had an 



ache in our hearts too. We have a shrewd 



suspicion that the corporal-major who 



owned him was a rough customer, and that 



poor O'Reilly's life was not that happy one 



which every "owned" dog's ought to be. 



A dog should not be treated as a dog. 



vl 



As for cats, once they have passed the giddy days of jj 

 youth, in which they are imps, sprites, goblins, pucks, 

 furry, fairy, freakish thingsanything but mere animals 

 one cannot help feeling a certain awe with regard to them. 

 Despite the many cycles of years that have elapsed since 

 their ancestors took habitation with us, they have remained 

 true Easterns. From father to son, from mother to 

 daughter they have handed down secret stores of occult 

 knowledge which they keep jealously to themselves, a sacred 

 inheritance of race. Those eyes that fix you with pupil 

 contracted to a slit, and look through and beyond you into 

 mysteries undreamt of by you : that lofty detachment, that 

 ineradicable independence, that relentless indifference : have 

 we not all felt by these signs and tokens how completely 

 the cat puts us outside the sphere of his real thoughts and 

 feelings ? Priests or priestesses they seem to fee, of some 

 alien creed, soul satisfying, contemplative, with sudden 



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