CHAPTER XXVII. TABBYTHA FELIS. I HAVE tugged, and lugged, and walked, and climbed so much to-day, I am tired. I think I can sleep to-night, all night, without dreaming, I say, as I ascend the stairs leading to my room. My parlor-door is half open. I say my parlor, for one of my rooms I have used as a parlor, ever since Mildred went away. She has been in Philadelphia some time. She sings in church there, and has a fine salary. As I go up the stairs, I hear a manly step walking back and forth, and a manly voice singing, "The monkey married the baboon's sister, I know the voice and the step. No other man would march back and forth so long, with little, plump, restless Nelly Harwed perched up on his shoulder, and no other man would Miss Nelly, coy and cautious as she is, allow to take such liberties with her little ladyship. At every revolution round the room, the gentleman shakes his head, and gives a funny little bob to the child in the glass. Nelly's head bobs too, and she almost kills herself with laughing, and everybody knows a child's laugh is the sweetest music in the world, the very soul of genuine glee. As I walk in, Nelly demurely descends from her proud elevation, sits down on a little bench at Arthur's feet, and folds her plump dimpled hands, in mute circumspect dignity. Arthur has been gone a long time, I am glad to see him back, as glad as I can be at anything now. He seizes my hand, shakes it cordially, looks earnestly into my face, and with sorrow and surprise in his fine eyes, he says, "Are you not well? Did you never recover from that fearful accident?" "Oh yes," I said, trying to look bright and like my old self again. "I recovered entirely from that a long time since. But yet I did n't tell him, how his coming brought with it the memory of the light heart I had once, when I saw him so often, and everything in life, present and future, looked calm, hopeful, bright. I sighed as I thought, the same undimmed light never could come back to my eyes again.. Yet, I am glad to see Arthur, though he cannot bring back with him all the rainbow-dreams woven around my heart only one year ago. While Arthur asks me a few questions and tells me about his travels, I am watching my cat; for though all alone in the world; brotherless, sisterless, motherless, I have one pet, my good-looking, well-behaved, most respectable, affectionate cat. I call her Tabbytha Felis. Tabbytha is a most wonderful judge and critic of people. From some of my gentleman callers, after giving one wise glance, she will turn and walk away into the remotest corner, with a suspicious shrug, and a defiant look in her wise face. She seems to know when people pay her heartless, hypocritical attention on my account, when inwardly they would give her a spiritual kick or sharp rebuff; and I can see a spiritual scratch in her eye. But no sooner is Arthur seated on the sofa, than Tabbytha Felis walks boldly and confidingly up to him, climbs up on his knee. He strokes her gently, pats her tenderly, plays with her so caressingly, while he is talking with me, elating her marvellously with his ceaseless attentions. She droops her head at last, cuddles up under his coat, and soon goes off into a soloistic pur, placid and profound; and at the end of her first brief nap, she half opens her sleepy eyes, looks quaintly up into Arthur's face, saying in her meek, mute eloquence, "You're my friend, ain't you?" If I were to get up a new engraving of Trust, I would have my · Tabbytha Felis seated on Arthur Glenstein's knee, and looking up into his frank, ingenuous, protecting face. Some fine artist has at last found out and revealed the hidden beauty of forlorn, forgotten cathood, cathood idealized. I saw the other day, at Schaus', a most exquisite picture of two beautiful kittens. I think under it was printed in French, "The two Sisters." It was a perfect little gem, and I hope to see the day when at the Annual Exhibition of Art, at the Academy of Design, there shall be one well-executed specimen of the neglected race. think I'll have Mr. Carleyn take a portrait of my Tabbytha; for I am sure she is graceful in motion, beautiful in repose. There's a great deal more expression in her face than many I people have. Just put a little cap on my Tabbytha's head, and you'll see what a wise, motherly, yet naive human look it brings out. Man, so absorbed with cares of the great outside world, will rarely give even an infinitesimal space of soul to thoughts of poor insignificant puss; but woman shares and sympathizes with the least little life breathing beside her. She spells out in the lowly, dumb face, the words, God made it; and this dignifies and elevates the lowliest life in her patient eyes; and never is lord of creation lordlier or lovelier to me, than when he steps aside from Ambition's royal walk, so as not to crush the least little worm that struggles so hard to live its brief appointed life. My Tabbytha is a faint abridgment, a concise epitome of her sex generally. She follows the gentle step, watches the kindly eye, comes at the friendly call, when she won't budge an inch for a harsh, petulant voice. How much faster and better, more happy and harmonious the world of humanity would move along, if people would only say to the helpless, hunted, timid, stubborn heart, "Come here, poor puss, puss, puss," instead of that disagreeable, domineering, dictatorial, will-defying, hate-challenging, everlasting, scat, scat, scat. I must tell you what happened yesterday. The front room under mine is occupied by Mr. Strong Willit, a bachelor between thirty and fifty. He is one of your go-a-head, inevitable-necessity, gunpowder, compound-blowpipe men. If he should find, when he comes back into his room after a brief absence, one of the pins gone off his cushion, he might fret himself into an epilectic fit or clonic spasm, over his severe loss and his great personal wrong. There, in his bachelor domains, are endless magazines, pamphlets, and books, lying in uniform symmetrical piles on book-shelves and tables. He had been arranging them over, and some were still lying on chairs and benches, piled up and classified, waiting to be restored to their old asylum on the book-shelves. My door was open and I heard him say, "It is perfectly outrageous that confounded cat should stray in here. I wish I could break her neck for her." Heimagined (as I contend few great souls ever do), that even my Tabbytha's quiet presence was an intrusion, a serious obstacle to his uninterrupted reading. So Mr. Strong Willit flew at the animal. Terrified and excited, she goes every way but the right, as she hears the ceaseless, stentorian roll-call of "Scat, scat, scat!" She hides first in one nook, then in another, in her precipitous evolutions and rapid revolutions around the room, upsetting magazines, pamphlets, papers, and the pile of newly-ironed shirts lying on his table, in her hasty hegira from her furious pursuer, and at last escapes through the open door, followed by the indignant Mr. Strong Willit, who drives her down the stairs and into the yard. In her rapid, ignorant, thoughtless flight, she jumps headlong into a neighboring pit, from whose deep, dark depths three precious mortal hours of labor and patience of the gentleman and Patrick combined can hardly extricate her. With linen soiled, locks dusty, back aching, and head weary, Mr. Willit returns to his room, having at last accomplished the marvelous, mighty feat of ejecting Tabbytha. A broken screwdriver, the first offensive weapon used, lay on the floor; beside it a broken tumbler, books, papers, bottles, and magazines, lay in one miscellaneous chaos. In her meanderings through recesses, Tabbytha had overturned and overturned, and three more mortal hours could n't repair the damages. · If I hadn't been a woman, I would have gone in and said, "Mr. Willit, I can give you a safe, sure writ of ejectment for universal cathood. Call, in a gentle tone, once or twice, Puss, puss, poor pussy, pussy, and she will come from her retreat noiselessly and promptly; at your gentlest bidding harmlessly depart." a woman. But your genuine, inveterate cat-hater never takes advice from Mr. Strong Willit, and all the members of his family, glory in the majestic might, the masculine prerogative of their infallible reason. As I hear Mr. Willit go growling back into his room, I think all there is great about that man is his will. It is a perfect Colossus. He would rather carry out a wrong to its extremest, bitter end, if he willed its beginning, than turn a little and go into the path of right; even though shining lamps and cheering stars beckon him on. He'll follow a thorny path, dismal and dark, till his soul is scarred and maimed, because in some blind moment he wished and willed to enter it. He'll walk the way he puts his foot down first, following giant General Will, though Victory's sweetest, noblest voice entreats and commands him to right-about-face. Mrs. Harwed comes to the door for Nelly, and requests the privilege of Tabbytha Felis's company down stairs awhile, -it will please Nelly so; and so Tabbytha departs out of my room, |