without the archery matches whose target was a terrified,
bleeding cat, hung up in a wicker "bottle," while shouts of glee
greeted the successful hits in the whizzing storm of arrows. As a
special merry-making, a great company of our jovial ancestors would set
forth on horseback, with drum-beating and all manner of hullabaloo,
attended by half the population of the town, to enjoy themselves at the
expense of some ill-fated pussy. A barrel, half full of soot, was swung
from a cross-beam firmly fixed on two high poles. Into this barrel she
was plunged and under it the valiant horsemen rode as gayly as the
English ride to a fox-hunt even yet, striking it tremendous blows with
clubs and wooden hammers. If any life was left in the bruised and
mangled cat, after the destruction of the barrel, the man who put an
end to her by some spectacular novelty of barbarity was the hero of the
day.

How can we expect wise old Grimalkin to forgive us our atrocities? She
remembers. Accepting or rejecting at her pleasure what courtesies are
offered her, she maintains her own reserves. Rare are the recorded
instances of her going out of her way to serve mankind, to whom she
owes no debt of gratitude. Yet a legend, attested by two portraits of
this Good Samaritan, tells that when Sir Henry Wyatt, father of the
poet, was imprisoned in the Tower under Richard III and left to perish
of starvation, a cat came daily to his window-grating, bringing him a
pigeon from a neighboring dove-cot, which doubtless had its own opinion
of her charity. No wonder that Sir Henry, in his later, honored years
under the Tudors, "would ever make much of cats, as other men will of
their spaniels or hounds."

With the best will in the world toward _felis domestica_, I have never
been able to maintain fortunate relations with the individuals that
have come my way. Colleagues of mine have reared kittens that have
become the pride and joy of their hearths, as yellow Leo, who passed
from the happiest of homes into a lyric shrine; but my own cats make a
sorry parade down the avenue of memory. At the far, dim end of the
avenue glints out a chubby child in a calico-caped sunbonnet,
laboriously trundling in her doll-carriage five blind kittens, with the
benevolent intent of giving them a pleasant airing. The little
copper-toed shoes bump on the rocks and are caught in the brambles of
that rough pasture, while at every jolt that sprawl of kittenhood
overflowing the small red