ving
me in the lurch in a vale of unavailing tears. I should have preferred
going with my family to that blessed Utopia where there are neither
births, deaths, marriages, divorces, breaches of promise, nor return
tickets; only, unfortunately, I was not invited. So I became a
posthumous orphan, soothed by Daffy's elixir and the skim-milk of human
kindness. The milk was none too sweet, human kindness did not spare the
rod, and I firmly believe it was Daffy's elixir that turned my hair red.
However, I grew up at length into stand-up collars and tail coats, and
at the age of seventeen springs was adopted (on trial) by a maiden aunt
of seven-and-forty autumns. Like a gleam of sunshine hope flashed into
my loveless life, lighting up my path to fortune. But it was only the
glimmer of an _ignis fatuus_, which led me into a quicksand and snuffed
itself out in a fog.

[Illustration: A PROPER HOWL OF DISGUST.]

[Illustration: HIS MAIDEN AUNT.]

My relative had plenty of money, and plenty of other equally good
qualities in the long run, no doubt; but the period of my adoption was
too short to make sure of either the one or the other. If the wealthy
maiden was really a worthy soul she did not let her nephew know it.
Corporeally she was angular and iron-grey, with a summary tongue and
wintry temper, chastened by a fondness for feline favourites. Unluckily,
I was always falling foul of the latter, and my aunt continually fell
foul of me in consequence. Crabbed age and youth could not live together
in our case on account of cats. Age, as represented by the mature
virgin, adored the brutes; youth, in the shape of a sprouting
hobbledehoy, abhorred them altogether, and one evil minded black Tom in
particular. My aunt called him Beauty, in happy ignorance that all her
household called him a Beast. I admire beauty in the abstract; I also
like it in the concrete; and in the concreted form of youthful feminine
humanity I love it. But that feline black Beauty was the most outrageous
misnomer unhanged. I had tried to hang him several times, down in the
cellar in the dead of night; but his patent cast-iron neck set
suspensory science at defiance, and Beauty triumphantly refused to give
up the ghost. At first, he kicked and fought against it lustily, and
yelled murder with all his might; but after a little practice the
malefactor acted more philosophically, regarding the performance quite
as part of his nocturnal programme. He never allowed it