is a good deal over fifty years ago. The frosty breeze
flapped his short shirt about his lean legs; the crystal roof shone like
polished marble in the intense glory of the moon; the unconscious cats
sat erect upon the chimney, alertly watching each other, lashing their
tails and pouring out their hollow grievances; and slowly and
cautiously Jim crept on, flapping as he went, the gay and frolicsome
young creatures under the vine-canopy unaware, and outraging these
solemnities with their misplaced laughter. Every time Jim slipped I had
a hope; but always on he crept and disappointed it. At last he was
within reaching distance. He paused, raised himself carefully up,
measured his distance deliberately, then made a frantic grab at the
nearest cat--and missed. Of course he lost his balance. His heels flew
up, he struck on his back, and like a rocket he darted down the roof
feet first, crashed through the dead vines and landed in a sitting
posture in fourteen saucers of red-hot candy, in the midst of all that
party--and dressed as _he_ was: this lad who could not look a girl in
the face with his clothes on. There was a wild scramble and a storm of
shrieks, and Jim fled up the stairs, dripping broken crockery all the
way.

[Sidenote: (1867.)]

The incident was ended. But I was not done with it yet, though I
supposed I was. Eighteen or twenty years later I arrived in New York
from California, and by that time I had failed in all my other
undertakings and had stumbled into literature without intending it. This
was early in 1867. I was offered a large sum to write something for the
"Sunday Mercury," and I answered with the tale of "Jim Wolf and the
Cats." I also collected the money for it--twenty-five dollars. It seemed
over-pay, but I did not say anything about that, for I was not so
scrupulous then as I am now.

A year or two later "Jim Wolf and the Cats" appeared in a Tennessee
paper in a new dress--as to spelling; spelling borrowed from Artemus
Ward. The appropriator of the tale had a wide reputation in the West,
and was exceedingly popular. Deservedly so, I think. He wrote some of
the breeziest and funniest things I have ever read, and did his work
with distinguished ease and fluency. His name has passed out of my
memory.

A couple of years went by; then the original story--my own
version--cropped up again and went floating around in the spelling, and
with my name to it. Soon first one paper and then another fell upon m