Sunday school folks have all gone back on me, since I put kyan
pepper on the stove, when they were singing 'Little Drops of Water,' and
they all had to go out doors and air themselves, but I didn't mean to
let the pepper drop on the stove. I was just holding it over the stove
to warm it, when my chum hit the funny bone of my elbow. Pa says I am a
terror to cats. Every time Pa says anything, it gives me a new idea. I
tell you Pa has got a great brain, but sometimes he don't have it with
him. When he said I was a terror to cats I thought what fun there is
in cats, and me and my chum went to stealing cats right off, and before
night we had eleven cats caged. We had one in a canary bird cage, three
in Pa's old hat boxes, three in Ma's band box, four in valises, two in a
trunk, and the rest in a closet up stairs."

"That night Pa said he wanted me to stay home because the committee that
is going to get up a noyster supper in the church was going to meet at
our house, and they might want to send me on errands. I asked him if my
chum couldn't stay too, 'cause he is the healthiest infant to run after
errands that ever was, and Pa said he could stay, but we must remember
that there musn't be no monkey business going on. I told him there
shouldn't be no monkey business, but I didn't promise nothing about
cats. Well, sir, you'd a dide. The committee was in the library by the
back stairs, and me and my chum got the cat boxes all together, at the
top of the stairs, and we took them all out and put them in a clothes
basket, and just as the minister was speaking, and telling what a great
good was done by these oyster sociables, in bringing the young people
together, and taking their minds from the wickedness of the world, and
turning their thoughts into different channels, one of the old torn
cats in the basket gave a 'purmeow' that sounded like the wail of a lost
soul, or a challenge to battle, I told my chum that we couldn't hold the
bread-board over the clothes basket much longer, when two or three cats
began to yowl, and the minister stopped talking and Pa told Ma to open
the stair door and tell the hired girl to see what was the matter up
there. She thought our cat had got shut up in the storm door, and she
opened the stair door to yell to the girl, and then I pushed the clothes
basket, cats and all down the back stairs. Well, sir, I suppose no
committee for a noyster supper, was ever more astonished. I heard ma
fall over a willow