THE LADIES' FLORAL CABINET. 
263 
ones being put in their place, and if the plant seems to 
throw off a very considerable amount of moisture, such 
as will render the wadding quite damp, change the 
wadding also. A second and even a third change is 
desirable at the end of two or three days or a week ; 
and when this is made, introduce the blotting paper, 
pressing again until everything is perfectly flat, and the 
specimens are absolutely dry. 
Such is the simple process by which the writer of 
these lines has succeeded in the art of preserving the 
colors and forms, not only of robust and tractable 
plants, but of the most delicate and very many of the 
obdurate. Every petal, every leaflet, retains the form 
it had in life, and nine specimens out of ten keep their 
colors excellently. 
To insure the keeping of color , it is well, if time can 
be spared, to change the blotting paper many times, 
and to dry it thoroughly before the fire, but this 
need not be done till after the third day from the 
beginning. 
POLLY’S MORTIFICATION. 
Polly Blatchley hugged up close to her face what 
looked like a little ball of soft, dark fur, with two 
bright, green-gray eyes shining somewhere in it. 
“ William brought it just now,” she said byway of 
explanation to her mother. 
Mrs. Blatchley smiled at her little daughter’s happy 
face. 
“ Cook warmed some milk for her,” continued Polly; 
“but, mamma, she is such a baby kitten, she hardly 
knew how to take it. I had to put her little nose and 
mouth right down into it, so, and then she’d wipe them 
with her little red napkin.” 
“Her little red napkin?” asked Mrs. Blatchley. 
Polly laughed. “ That’s her tongue, mamma; Nora 
called it so.” And she gave the kitten a tender hug. 
The little creature uttered a faint cry. 
“ Let her go, Polly,” said the lady. “ Don’t you re¬ 
member how you always hated to be held when you 
wanted to run about ? ” 
The child looked up in surprise. “ Does she feel just 
the way I do? Are you sure, mamma?” 
Polly set down the kitten very tenderly, as if she 
thought the little velvet paws would be broken should 
their owner jump. Kitty frisked off to the piano, and 
stood motionless before one of its smooth, polished legs. 
But seeing she could not climb this slippery column, she 
turned away, and in a moment pounced upon the fringe 
of the great rug before the fireplace, and was soon 
rolling over and over in a great frolic. Mrs. Blatchley 
had sent Polly upon some errand, and the little girl 
coming back into the room, sprang forward: 
“ O, kitty, kitty! ” 
Kitty had scrambled up the waste-paper basket on the 
edge of the rug. The basket was made of straw; it was 
very light, quite tall, and nearly empty, so that when 
Polly looked, it was tipping with the added weight, 
while kitty, hanging on the edge of it, half inside and 
half out, was vainly trying to save herself from the 
fall she felt was coming. In her fright her soft fur 
stood out like a puff-ball, and her little tail was waving 
wildly in the air. 
Before the child could rush to the rescue it was too 
late, and kitty, scampering off to a safe distance, stood 
looking in such wonder at the overturned basket, that 
Polly had to stop and laugh. 
As the days went by the kitten grew amusing to all 
the family. It was full of play. The booking in the 
dining-room was never smooth, for kitty was always 
playing hide-and-seek with it. She would burrow 
under one corner, and then spring into the air carrying 
her covering with her; it would come down all rumpled 
and twisted; then, she would try another. She had 
such a fancy for spools that she would wake out of a 
nap to spring upon the table and knock one down. She 
could even make a hook of her little paw and fish 
them out of a work-basket, and people were always 
finding themselves caught in meshes of thread and silk 
that wound round and round, until they seemed to be 
endless. 
One day Mrs. Blatchley asked Polly if she thought 
they could really afford to keep her. 
“She uses up more silk than all your sewing,” she 
said. 
“ Charge it to me, mamma,” Polly answered. “ You 
say you like to see little people enjoying themselves.” 
“People!” 
“Committee is just the same,” said Polly. 
Of course, she meant the kitten, who was so very in¬ 
quisitive that one day when Mr. Blatchley was laugh¬ 
ing at her for running to peep into a closet she had not 
seen before, he said she was better than any Investigat¬ 
ing Committee. Polly adopted the name at once. 
“ I christened her Investigating Committee, according 
to papa’s suggestion,” she would explain. 
One day in November, soon after the arrival of her 
pet, she said: 
“Mamma, I’m so glad we’re going to stay in the 
country all winter; for I think really the country is so 
much better place to bring up a kitten in ! ” 
Polly didn’t like at all having to leave kitty so long 
when she went to church. She could take kitty with 
her to play, or she could come in to see her whenever 
she liked. She said nothing of this grievance, for she 
approved of going to church, but she thought about it 
a good deal. 
One Sabbath near the end of the month the little 
girl, who sometimes had to be waited for, was already 
in the carriage when Mrs. Blatchley came to the door. 
“You in the back seat, Polly?” she asked. “I 
thought you always liked to ride in front.” 
“I thought I wouldn’t to-day, mamma.” 
Mrs. Blatchley put her foot on the step of the carriage, 
but instead of taking her place beside Polly, she stopped 
in surprise. “ What is that great bundle in your lap, 
child?” 
Polly started, and looked down carefully. “ That’s 
a muff,” she said. “I heard you say just now, mamma, 
it was very winterish.” 
