d to convince him, while he was
eating it, that he was doing wrong; for he is a reasonable cat, and
understands pretty much everything except the binomial theorem and
the time down the cycloidal arc. But with no effect. The killing of
birds went on, to my great regret and shame.

The other day I went to my garden to get a mess of peas. I had seen,
the day before, that they were just ready to pick. How I had lined
the ground, planted, hoed, bushed them! The bushes were very fine,
--seven feet high, and of good wood. How I had delighted in the
growing, the blowing, the podding! What a touching thought it was
that they had all podded for me! When I went to pick them, I found
the pods all split open, and the peas gone. The dear little birds,
who are so fond of the strawberries, had eaten them all. Perhaps
there were left as many as I planted: I did not count them. I made a
rapid estimate of the cost of the seed, the interest of the ground,
the price of labor, the value of the bushes, the anxiety of weeks of
watchfulness. I looked about me on the face of Nature. The wind
blew from the south so soft and treacherous! A thrush sang in the
woods so deceitfully! All Nature seemed fair. But who was to give
me back my peas? The fowls of the air have peas; but what has man?

I went into the house. I called Calvin. (That is the name of our
cat, given him on account of his gravity, morality, and uprightness.
We never familiarly call him John). I petted Calvin. I lavished
upon him an enthusiastic fondness. I told him that he had no fault;
that the one action that I had called a vice was an heroic exhibition
of regard for my interests. I bade him go and do likewise
continually. I now saw how much better instinct is than mere
unguided reason. Calvin knew. If he had put his opinion into
English (instead of his native catalogue), it would have been: "You
need not teach your grandmother to suck eggs." It was only the round
of Nature. The worms eat a noxious something in the ground. The
birds eat the worms. Calvin eats the birds. We eat--no, we do not
eat Calvin. There the chain stops. When you ascend the scale of
being, and come to an animal that is, like ourselves, inedible, you
have arrived at a result where you can rest. Let us respect the cat.
He completes an edible chain.

I have little heart to discuss methods of raising peas. It occurs to
me that I can have an iron peabush, a sort of trellis, through which
I could discharge elect