dn't be no
monkey business, but I didn't promise nothing about cats. Well, sir, you'd
a dide. The committee was in the library by the back stairs, and me and my
chum got the cat boxes all together, at the top of the stairs, and we took
them all out and put them in a clothes basket, and just as the minister
was speaking, and telling what a great good was done by these oyster
sociables, in bringing the young people together, and taking their minds
from the wickedness of the world, and turning their thoughts into
different channels, one of the old tom cats in the basket gave a 'purmeow'
that sounded like the wail of a lost soul, or a challenge to battle. I
told my chum that we couldn't hold the bread-board over the clothes basket
much longer, when two or three cats began to yowl, and the minister
stopped talking and Pa told Ma to open the stair door and tell the hired
girl to see what was the matter up there. She thought our cat had got shut
up in the storm door, and she opened the stair door to yell to the girl,
and then I pushed the clothes basket, cats and all down the back stairs.
Well, sir, I suppose no committee for a noyster supper, was ever more
astonished. I heard Ma fall over a willow rocking chair, and say, 'scat,'
and I heard Pa say, 'well. I'm dam'd,' and a girl that sings in the choir
say, 'Heavens, I am stabbed,' then my chum and me ran to the front of the
house and come down the front stairs looking as innocent as could be, and
we went in the library, and I was just going to tell Pa if there was any
errands he wanted run my chum and me was just aching to run them, when a
yellow cat without any tail was walking over the minister, and Pa was
throwing a hassock at two cats that were clawing each other under the
piano, and Ma was trying to get her frizzes back on her head, and the
choir girl was standing on the lounge with her dress pulled up, trying to
scare cats with her striped stockings, and the minister was holding his
hands up, and I guess he was asking a blessing on the cats, and my chum
opened the front door and all the cats went out. Pa and Ma looked at me,
and I said it wasn't me, and the minister wanted to know how so much cat
hair got on my coat and vest, and I said a cat met me in the hall and
kicked me, and Ma cried, and Pa said 'that boy beats hell,' and the
minister said, I would be all right if I had been properly brought up, and
then Ma was mad, and the committee broke up. Well, to tell the hones