116 A CONVENTION BROKEN UP IN A BOW. 



Broadway, the lots meeting midway between the two streets. 

 On the rear of these lots are the out-houses, all under a con- 

 tinuous flat roof, some twelve feet high, twenty wide, and 

 say a hundred and fifty feet long. In the rear of the Broad- 

 way dwelling-houses, are one story tea-rooms, or third par- 

 lors, the roofs of which form a continuous platform, upon 

 which you can step from the second story of the houses." 

 " Well," said the Doctor, " what of all that ?" 

 " There's a great deal of it," Smith replied. " I don't pre- 

 tend to know how many cats there were in the city of 

 Albany. Indeed, I never heard that they were included in 

 the census. I do not undertake to say that they all congre- 

 gated nightly on the roofs of those out-houses. But if there 

 was a cat in the sixth ward, that didn't have something to 

 say on that roof every night, I should like to make its ac- 

 quaintance. I am against cats. I regard them as treacher- 

 ous, ungrateful animals, and as having very small moral 

 developments generally. I am against c^-terwauling, espe- 

 cially in the night season, when honest people have a right 

 to their natural sleep. I don't like to be woke up, when 

 rounding a pleasant dream, by their growling and screaming, 

 spitting and whining, groaning and crying, and the hundred 

 other nameless noises by which they frighten sleep from our 

 pillows. 



" Well, one night, it may have been one o'clock, or two, 

 or three, I was awakened by the awfullest screaming and 

 sputtering, growling and swearing, that ever startled a 

 weary man from his slumbers. I leaped out of bed under 



