26 THE FIRESIDE SPHINX 



Burmah these thrice fortunate animals are treated 

 with becoming deference; and the Hungarian scien- 

 tist, Vambery, tells of a Buddhist convent in east- 

 ern Thibet, where there were so many pussies, all 

 sleek and fat, that he could not forbear asking the 

 pious inmates why they deemed it necessary to keep 

 such a feline colony. " All things have their uses," 

 was the serene reply. " Cats are carnal-minded, 

 clamorous, and far from cleanly ; but they atone for 

 their sins by destroying rats, mice, and weasels, and 

 thus spare us the temptation of imbruing our hands 

 in the blood of our fellow creatures." — For the deli- 

 cate refinements of casuistry, one must still turn to 

 the subtle and contemplative East, 



It was an ill day for Pussy when she left this land 

 of ease, and began her bleak northwestern journey. 

 Sir John Lubbock asserts that there is no proof of 

 her domestication in Great Britain or in France be- 

 fore the ninth century ; but the dim records of those 

 far-off years leave much untold, and she may have 

 arrived quietly and without ostentation a hundred 

 years or so earlier. That her usefulness was recog- 

 nized, and that she was highly prized as long as her 

 rarity enhanced her value, is shown by an ancient 

 statute ascribed to Howel Dda, or Howel the Good, 

 a Welsh prince whose life is otherwise shrouded 

 in obscurity. This admirable ruler — assuredly the 

 Wise as well as the Good — made a law in 948, 



