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 interest. 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 pea-bush, a sort of trellis, through which I could discharge electricity at frequent intervals and electrify the birds to death when they alight; for they stand upon my beautiful bush in order to pick out the peas. An apparatus of this kind, with an operator, would cost, however, about as much as the peas. A neighbor suggests that I might put up a scarecrow near the vines, which would keep the birds away. I am doubtful about it; the birds are too much accustomed to seeing a person in poor clothes in the garden to care much for that. Another neighbor suggests that the birds do not open the pods; that a sort of blast, apt to come after rain, splits the pods, and the birds then eat the peas. It may be so. There seems to be complete unity of action between the blast and the birds. But good neighbors, kind friends, I desire that you will not increase, by talk, a disappointment which you cannot assuage. CROWDED Chauncey Depew says: In the Berkshire Hills there was a funeral, and as the friends and mourners gathered in the little parlor, there came the typical New England female who mingles curiosity with her sympathy, and, as she glanced around the darkened room, she said to the bereaved widow: "Where did you get that new eight-day clock?" "We ain't got no new eight-day clock," was the reply. "You ain't? What's that in the corner there?" "Why, no, that's not an eight-day clock; that's the deceased. We stood him on end to make room for the mourners." * * * * * A young wife who lost her husband by death telegraphed the sad tidings to her father in these succinct words: "Dear John died this morning at ten. Loss fully covered by insurance." THE ALARMED SKIPPER "It was an Ancient Mariner"