142 THE FIRESIDE SPHINX 



kitten always, being extremely small for her age ; 

 but time, I suppose, that spoils everything, will make 

 her also a cat. You will see her, I hope, before 

 that melancholy period shall arrive ; for no wisdom 

 that she may gain by experience will compensate 

 her for the loss of her present hilarity." 



What would the poet's pleasant winter evenings 

 have been worth, if uncheered by such gay com- 

 panionship ? 



With the waning of the eighteenth century and 

 the dawn of its successor, the English cat assumes 

 a more intimate place in letters. Never granted 

 the tender and flattering preeminence of her 

 French sister, she is in some sort recompensed by 

 the tranquil domestic atmosphere, the fireside 

 warfnth and glow in which we see her play her 

 gentle part. For a hundred years and more she 

 had not wanted friends. In 1702 the Duchess of 

 Richmond, that fair and lovable creature who had 

 "less wit and more beauty " than any lady at court, 

 bequeathed a maintenance to her old servants, her 

 old cats, and to several old gentlewomen whom she 

 had long befriended. It was this bounty that pro- 

 voked from Pope the ever-quoted line, 



" Die, and endow a college or a cat : " 



but to most of us it would seem as though such 

 gracious kindness merited a less satiric recogni- 



