ceased to be surprised when its place was found empty."
"C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre."
Mr. Rule, who succeeded in crossing a domestic cat of the tortoise-shell variety with a young wild cat, found that the male kitten of this strangely assorted pair was beyond measure quarrelsome and fierce. Had he lived, he might have scaled heights of wickedness unknown generally to his race, and have rivalled that animal whom De Quincey respected as a veritable assassin, not a mere slayer of robins and rats. He died, however, in his lusty youth, and his sister was as gentle and playful as he had been sullen and violent. Both inherited the beauty of their mother, and the superb activity of their free-born sire.
"The human race," says an acute thinker, "may be divided into people who love cats and people who hate them; the neutrals being few in numbers, and, for intellectual and moral reasons, not worth considering." This is true, even in our day of feeble passions and lukewarm antagonisms. The old inheritance of fear, the old association with evil, still darken Pussy's pathway. That sick abhorrence which shook poor Ronsard's soul if a cat but crossed his path, is not unknown in the twentieth century; and there are many who—strange though it may appear—prefer their chimney cor-
