edge, under the firm conviction that he would be in the
ground in a week. A _little_ nervous, indeed!"

"Well," said Smith, "we won't quarrel about the degree of my
nervousness. But in regard to what I was going to say about cats. Some
years ago I occupied a suite of rooms in the second story of a house
rented by a widow lady, to whom I had been under some obligations in
my boyhood, and whom my mother always regarded as her best friend."
(Smith supported the excellent old lady in comfort for a decade, under
pretence of boarding with her, ministering to the last years of her
life with the care and affection of a son.) "The landlord of the
premises was the owner of a block of twelve houses--six on Pearl
street, and six on Broadway, the lots meeting midway between the two
streets. On the rear of these lots are the out-houses, all under a
continuous flat roof, some twelve feet high, twenty wide, and say a
hundred and fifty feet long. In the rear of the Broadway
dwelling-houses, are one story tea-rooms, or third parlors, the roofs
of which form a continuous platform, upon which you can step from the
second story of the houses."

"Well," said the Doctor, "what of all that?"

"There's a great deal of it," Smith replied. "I don't pretend to know
how many cats there were in the city of Albany. Indeed, I never heard
that they were included in the census. I do not undertake to say that
they _all_ congregated nightly on the roofs of those out-houses. But
if there was a cat in the sixth ward, that didn't have something to
say on that roof every night, I should like to make its acquaintance.
I am against cats. I regard them as treacherous, ungrateful animals,
and as having very small moral developments generally. I am against
_cat-_terwauling, especially in the night season, when honest people
have a right to their natural sleep. I don't like to be woke up, when
rounding a pleasant dream, by their growling and screaming, spitting
and whining, groaning and crying, and the hundred other nameless
noises by which they frighten sleep from our pillows.

"Well, one night, it may have been one o'clock, or two, or three, I
was awakened by the awfullest screaming and sputtering, growling and
swearing, that ever startled a weary man from his slumbers. I leaped
out of bed under the impression that at least twenty little children
had fallen into as many tubs of boiling water. I threw open the window
and stepped out upon the roof of the tea-ro