though I am
far enough off to be absolutely safe,--alas! eternally a mere spectator.
And speaking of having been cold reminds me that it is beginning to
get cold again. We have had heavy hailstorms already, hail as big
and hard as dried peas, and I have not as yet been able to get fuel.
So I am looking forward to another trying winter. In the spring my
coal-dealer assured me that last winter's situation would not be
repeated, and I told him that I would take all the coal he could get me.
Having said that, I took no further thought of the matter. Up to date he
has not been able to get any. The railroad is too busy carrying war
material.

I was pained by the tone of your last letter. Evidently mine of the
Fourth of July did not please you. Evidently you don't like my politics
or my philosophy, or my "deadly parallels," or any of my thoughts
about the present and future of my native land. Destroy the letter.
Forget it, and we'll talk of other things, and, to take a big jump--

Did you ever keep cats?

There is a subject in which you can find no offence, and if it does not
appeal to you it is your own fault.

If you never have kept cats, you have missed lots of fun, you are not
half educated, you have not been disciplined at all. / A cat is a
wonderful animal, but he is not a bit like what, on first making his
acquaintance, you think he is going to be, and he never becomes it.

Now I have been living a year this September with one cat, and part
of the time, with two. I am wiser than I used to be. By fits and starts I
am more modest.

I used to think that a cat was a tame animal, who lapped milk, slept,
rolled up ornamentally on a rug, now and then chased his tail, and
now and then played gracefully with a ball, came and sat on your
knee when you invited him, and caught mice, if mice came where he
was.

All the cats I had seen in the homes of my friends surely did those
things. I thought them "so pretty," "so graceful," "so soft," and I
always said they "gave a cosy look to a room."

But I had never been intimate with a cat.

When the English soldiers were here a year ago, Amelie came one
morning bringing a kitten in her apron. You remember I told you of
this. He was probably three months old--so Amelie says, and she
knows all about cats. She said off-hand: "C'est un chat du mois de
juin." She seems to know what month well-behaved cats ought to be
born. So far as I know, they might be born in any old month. He w