el McClellan," and he disappeared again.

My companion said, vinegarishly, "Well, well! what do you say now?"
Right there comes in the marvellous coincidence I mentioned a while
ago--viz., I was speechless, and that is my condition now. Perceive it?

CATS AND CANDY

The following address was delivered at a social meeting of
literary men in New York in 1874:

When I was fourteen I was living with my parents, who were very
poor--and correspondently honest. We had a youth living with us by the
name of Jim Wolfe. He was an excellent fellow, seventeen years old,
and very diffident. He and I slept together--virtuously; and one bitter
winter's night a cousin Mary--she's married now and gone--gave what
they call a candy-pulling in those days in the West, and they took the
saucers of hot candy outside of the house into the snow, under a sort
of old bower that came from the eaves--it was a sort of an ell then, all
covered with vines--to cool this hot candy in the snow, and they were
all sitting there. In the mean time we were gone to bed. We were not
invited to attend this party; we were too young.

The young ladies and gentlemen were assembled there, and Jim and I were
in bed. There was about four inches of snow on the roof of this ell,
and our windows looked out on it; and it was frozen hard. A couple of
tom-cats--it is possible one might have been of the opposite sex--were
assembled on the chimney in the middle of this ell, and they were
growling at a fearful rate, and switching their tails about and going
on, and we couldn't sleep at all.

Finally Jim said, "For two cents I'd go out and snake them cats off that
chimney." So I said, "Of course you would." He said, "Well, I would;
I have a mighty good notion to do it." Says I, "Of course you have;
certainly you have, you have a great notion to do it." I hoped he might
try it, but I was afraid he wouldn't.

Finally I did get his ambition up, and he raised the window and climbed
out on the icy roof, with nothing on but his socks and a very short
shirt. He went climbing along on all fours on the roof toward the
chimney where the cats were. In the mean time these young ladies and
gentlemen were enjoying themselves down under the eaves, and when Jim
got almost to that chimney he made a pass at the cats, and his heels
flew up and he shot down and crashed through those vines, and lit in the
midst of the ladies and gentlemen, and sat down in those h