ness. She is familiar with the sheltering power of the elevated
corn-barn, but she never conjectures to what base uses a clothes-pole
may come, until one plunges into her sides. As she is not a St. Medard
Convulsionist, she does not like it, but strikes a bee-line for the
piazza, and rushes through the lattice-work into the darkness
underneath. We stoop to conquer, and she hurls Greek fire at us from her
wrathful eyes, but cannot stand against a reinforcement of poles which
vex her soul. With teeth still fastened upon her now unconscious victim,
she leaves her place of refuge, which indeed was no refuge for her, and
gallops through the yard and across the field; but an unseen column has
flanked her, and she turns back only to fall into the hands of the main
army,--too late, alas! for the tender chick, who has picked his last
worm and will never chirp again. But his death is speedily avenged.
Within the space of three days, Molly, formerly Maltesa, is taken into
custody, tried, convicted, sentenced, remanded to prison in an old
wagon-box, and transported to Botany Bay, greatly to the delight of Rory
O'More, formerly Aurora, who, in the presence of her overgrown
contemporary, was never suffered to call her soul her own, much less a
bone or a crust. Indeed, Molly never seemed half so anxious to eat,
herself, as she was to bind Rory to total abstinence. When a plate was
set for them, the preliminary ceremony was invariably a box on the ear
for poor Rory, or a grab on the neck, from Molly's spasmodic paw, which
would not release its hold till armed intervention set in and enforced a
growling neutrality. In short, like the hens, these cats held up a
mirror to human nature. They showed what men and women would be, if they
were--cats; which they would be, if a few modifying qualities were left
out. They exhibit selfishness and greed in their pure forms, and we see
and ought to shun the unlovely shapes. Evil propensities may be hidden
by a silver veil, but they are none the less evil and bring forth evil
fruit. Let cats delight to snarl and bite, but let men and women be
generous and beneficent.

Little chickens, tender and winsome as they are, early discover the same
disposition. When one of them comes into possession of the fore-quarter
of a fly, he does not share it with his brother. He does not even
quietly swallow it himself. He clutches it in his bill and flies around
in circles and irregular polygons, like one distracted,