He cast an eye over the group.

"Oh, I don't think so," he said; "you see, we are all one family."

"The paragraph says nothing about its being a family drove or not," I
replied; "it simply says 'drove.' I do not mean it in any
uncomplimentary sense, but, speaking etymologically, I am inclined
personally to regard your collection as a 'drove.' Whether the police
will take the same view or not remains to be seen. I am merely warning
you."

My friend himself was inclined to pooh-pooh my fears; but his wife
thinking it better not to run any risk of having the party broken up by
the police at the very beginning of the evening, they divided, arranging
to come together again in the theatre lobby.

Another passion you must restrain in Germany is that prompting you to
throw things out of window. Cats are no excuse. During the first week
of my residence in Germany I was awakened incessantly by cats. One night
I got mad. I collected a small arsenal--two or three pieces of coal, a
few hard pears, a couple of candle ends, an odd egg I found on the
kitchen table, an empty soda-water bottle, and a few articles of that
sort,--and, opening the window, bombarded the spot from where the noise
appeared to come. I do not suppose I hit anything; I never knew a man
who did hit a cat, even when he could see it, except, maybe, by accident
when aiming at something else. I have known crack shots, winners of
Queen's prizes--those sort of men,--shoot with shot-guns at cats fifty
yards away, and never hit a hair. I have often thought that, instead of
bull's-eyes, running deer, and that rubbish, the really superior marksman
would be he who could boast that he had shot the cat.

But, anyhow, they moved off; maybe the egg annoyed them. I had noticed
when I picked it up that it did not look a good egg; and I went back to
bed again, thinking the incident closed. Ten minutes afterwards there
came a violent ringing of the electric bell. I tried to ignore it, but
it was too persistent, and, putting on my dressing gown, I went down to
the gate. A policeman was standing there. He had all the things I had
been throwing out of the window in a little heap in front of him, all
except the egg. He had evidently been collecting them. He said:

"Are these things yours?"

I said: "They were mine, but personally I have done with them. Anybody
can have them--you can have them."

He ignored my offer. He said:

"You threw these things out of