But some men repeat, time after time, experiences quite as absurd. I know a well-dressed gentleman, who paid at least £120 a year rent, who was charged four times in as many months for going in search of ‘a black kitten with a blue ribbon round its neck.’ Really, he was charged with annoyance, ringing the bell and kicking the front-door of some other gentleman’s house. The story was always the same--a little drink, and then he would go to a house, ring the bell, and, when the servant came, he would demand his kitten. In vain would the servant assure him that there was no kitten in their house. If the door was closed, he would continue ringing, and would ultimately proceed to kicking the door, and would refuse to budge till he had got his kitten. As the kitten was a purely imaginary one, a constable had to be fetched and the gentleman taken into custody. He was bound over in his own recognizances twice, and ultimately fined; but when I suggested that if he would put a bit of blue ribbon on his own coat it would prevent him seeing an imaginary kitten with an imaginary blue ribbon, he was most angry, and wanted to know if I accused him of being drunk. Possibly he has taken my advice, for I have not seen him since. A very little drink will make some men who are naturally modest and diffident very assertive, and they become, mentally, very large indeed; in fact, for the time, it would appear that all knowledge and wisdom are centred in them; but it has a similar effect, physically, upon other men, whom I have found imagining themselves to be veritable sons of Anak. Such was little Ebbs. Nature had denied him much stature, for in his boots he only stood five feet three. I don’t know whether he had an intense longing to be tall, or whether his ambition was to be a policeman; but this I do know, that no sooner had he partaken of a glass of beer than he became a six-foot policeman. The change in his stature and profession would not have mattered but for the fact that he insisted on doing policeman’s duty, and this led to unpleasant results, and necessitated his frequent appearances before the magistrate. He was always a welcome visitor at the court, and it was an understood thing among the different magistrates that he was to be allowed to have his head when he stood in the dock.