Concerning Still Other Peoples Cats 



years ago for the entertainment of my children."' 

 Brander Matthews loves them not. George W. Cable 

 answers, when asked if he loves the " harmless, nec- 

 essary cat," by the Yankee method, and says, " If 

 you had three or four acres of beautiful woods in 

 which were little red squirrels and chipmunks and 

 fifty or more kinds of nesting birds, and every abut- 

 ting neighbor kept a cat, and none of them kept their 

 cat out of those woods — would you like cats ? " which 

 is, indeed, something of a poser. 



Colonel Thomas W. Higginson, however, confesses 

 to a great fondness for cats, although he has had no 

 remarkable cats of his own. He tells a story told him 

 by an old sailor at Pigeon Cove, Mass., of a cat which 

 he, the sailor, tried in vain to get rid of. After trying 

 several methods he finally put the cat in a bag, walked 

 a mile to Lane's Cove, tied the cat to a big stone with 

 a firm sailor's knot, took it out in a dory some distance 

 from the shore, and dropped the cat overboard. Then 

 he went back home to find the cat purring on the 

 doorstep. 



Those who are familiar with Charles Dudley War- 

 ner's " My Summer in a Garden " will not need to 

 be reminded of Calvin and his interesting traits. Mr. 

 Warner says : " I never had but one cat, and he was 

 rather a friend and companion than a cat. When he 

 departed this life I did not care to do as many men 

 do when their partners die, take a ' second.' " The 



1 " Mother Michel's Cat." 

 67 



