_North._--Where are the following lines?

"From the soft music of the spinning purr,
When no stiff hair disturbs the glossy fur,
The whining wail so piteous and so faint,
When through the house Puss moves with long complaint,
To that unearthly throttling caterwaul,
When feline legions storm the midnight wall,
And chant, with short snuff and alternate hiss,
The dismal song of hymeneal bliss"--

_Shepherd._--Wheesht, North, wheesht.

_Tickler._--Over the eaves sweeps the hairy hurricane. Two cats in
one--like a prodigious monster with eight legs and a brace of heads and
tails--and through among the lines on which clothes are hanging in the
back-green, and which break the fall, the dual number plays squelch on the
miry herbage.

_Shepherd._--A pictur o' a back-green in fowre words. I see it and
them.

_Tickler._--The four-story fall has given them fresh fury and more
fiery life. What tails!--each as thick as my arm, and rustling with
electricity like the northern streamers. The Red Rover is generally
uppermost--but not always, for Tom has him by the jugular like a very
bulldog--and his small, sharp, tiger-teeth, entangled in the fur, pierce
deeper and deeper into the flesh--while Tommy keeps tearing away at his
rival, as if he would eat his way into his wind-pipe. Heavier than Tom
Tortoiseshell is the Red Rover by a good many pounds;--but what is weight
to elasticity--what is body to soul? In the long tussle, the hero ever
vanquishes the ruffian--as the Cock of the North the Gander.

_North_ (_bowing_).--Proceed.

_Tickler._--Cats' heads are seen peering over the tops of walls, and
then their lengthening bodies, running crouchingly along the copestones,
with pricked-up ears and glaring eyes, all attracted towards one common
centre--the back-green of the inextinguishable battle. Some dropping, and
some leaping down, from all altitudes--lo! a general _melee_! For
Tabitha, having through a skylight forced her way down stairs, and out of
the kitchen-window into the back-area, is sitting pensively on the steps,

"And like another Helen fires another Troy."

Detachments come wheeling into the field of battle from all imaginable and
unimaginable quarters;--and you now see before you all the cats in
Edinburgh, Stockbridge, and the suburbs--about as many, I should suppose,
as the proposed constituents of our next city member.

_Shepherd._--The Town-Council are naething to them in nummers. The
back-g