From sheer force of contrast, both Mouche and Hugo must have enjoyed--had they known him--General Muff, the stately and affable favorite of an American authoress (Miss Mary L. Booth). I called upon this lady one day to request of her an introduction to the General; but he took matters into his own paws, as it were, and introduced himself before she could appear. Exquisitely dignified and urbane, his composure was not ruffled by the very wildest gambols of a Persian kitten, who darted, glanced and flashed hither and thither in the room like flame. He wore the famous Fayal collar in which he was photographed. He wore it because of artistic preference, I suppose--certainly not because he had nothing else to wear; for I saw in his own particular wardrobe collars of all kinds and colors, from dainty ribbon to Russia leather. May it be long before Muff’s gracious personality requires an epitaph! but when that time comes, the following lines will apply to him as fitly as to the one for whom they were written--the poet Whittier’s cat, Bathsheba: “Whereat None said ‘Scat!’ Better cat Never sat On a mat, Or caught a rat, Than this cat. Requiescat!” [Illustration: GENERAL MUFF, MISS MARY L. BOOTH’S CAT.] All who are familiar with the poem by Matthew Arnold, on Geist’s Grave, or another, on Kaiser, Dead, know the story, told as he alone could tell it, of this great author’s pets. The dachshund Geist lived four brief years, then “humbly laid” him “down to die.” Dearly loved, remembered always--often and often would his friends recall his “liquid, melancholy eye,” his wistful face at the window, the scuffle of his feet upon the stair, and his “small, black figure on the snow.” But “there is no photograph of poor little Geist,” says Mr. Arnold, “except one taken after his death, which gives pleasure to us, but could give it to no one else. There is, however, an excellent portrait of another dog of mine, Max, in a birthday book from my poems, but it is weighted by a very bad portrait of his master.” This was the Max of the poem, who “with downcast, reverent head” had looked upon “Kaiser, dead”--“Kaiser,” once the blithest, happiest of dogs, supposed at first to be pure dachshund, until at length with-- “The collie hair, the collie swing, The tail’s indomitable ring, The eye’s unrest-- The case was clear; a mongrel thing ‘Kai’ stood confest.” All the same-- “Thine eye was bright, thy coat it shone; Thou hadst thine errands off and on; In joy thine last morn flew; anon, A fit! All’s over; And thou art gone where Geist hath gone, And Toss and Rover.”