with each other, and their intercourse, when they
happened to meet on the common highway, was conducted in the courteous
and dignified manner of the race.

Cats are popularly supposed to dislike wet, but I have seen two of them
in a steady rain conduct an interview with all the gravity and
deliberation for which these affairs are celebrated. The slow approach,
with frequent pauses to sit down and meditate, or "view the landscape
o'er," the earnest and musical--if melancholy--exchange of salutations,
the almost imperceptible drawing nearer, with the slightly waving tail
the only sign of excitement, and at last the instantaneous dash, the
slap or scratch (so rapid one can never tell which), the fiery expletive
and retort, and the instant retreat, to sit down again. There seems to
be some canon of feline etiquette which forbids two to meet and pass
without solemn formalities of this sort, reminding one of the
ceremonious greetings of the Orient, where time is of no particular
value.

[Sidenote: _A WAY OF HIS OWN._]

The silver tabby was an original, and had a way of his own. He seemed
impatient of these serious rites, and when within three feet of his
_vis-a-vis_ he usually gave one great leap over the intervening space,
administered his salute,--whatever it was,--and passed on. This cat was
peculiar in other ways. Sometimes he had the whole wood to himself, and
it was charming to see him wander in his leisurely way all over it,
smelling daintily of this and that, now tasting a leaf, now looking
intently at some creeper or crawler on the ground, now sitting down to
enjoy the seclusion and the silence of the wood. He was a philosopher,
or a lover of nature,

"A lover who knows by heart
Each joy the mountain dales impart."

One of the accusations brought against this reserved little beast is
that he does not love man. Has he reason to do so? Tragedies I have seen
on the lot, which I try to forget and shall not repeat, in which small
boys demonstrated in their treatment of the abused race how much more
brutal than a brute the human animal can be. Cats show their
intelligence by being wary of mankind.

When October at last stripped the woods of their summer glory, and the
weather was no longer warm, the heat-loving creatures deserted the empty
lot, except the silver tabby, who often came out and sauntered through
its lonely paths, smelling of the weeds here and there, seating himself
in a bower that was still green