The cause of the outbreak was no less remarkable than the outbreak itself: the cats of Cheyenne incurred mental confusion from being supercharged with electricity. For a period of seven weeks the wind blew across the delightful region of which that city is the capital, at a calculated average velocity of thirty miles an hour. “The ground in consequence,” according to a resident scientist, “has become extremely dry, and the friction of the wind in passing over it has produced an enormous quantity of electricity, and every one is more or less charged.” So seriously indeed were some of the newer residents affected that they have had to leave Cheyenne and go to California for relief; and of those remaining it is related that even now when they shake hands there is a distinct and painful shock to him who is the less electrified. The performance of this social rite has therefore fallen into “innocuous desuetude,” men conscious of being imperfectly charged eying every approaching friend with natural suspicion, and preferring to pain him with a distant bow rather than incur the thunderbolt of a more familiar greeting. It is not apprehended that our most sacred American custom is menaced with anything more than local and temporary suspension, but it is feared that the American cat is on the eve of stupendous intellectual and musical changes that will make the name of Cheyenne memorable forever. THANKSGIVING DAY There be those whose memories though vexed with a rake would yield no matter for gratitude. With a waistcoat fitted to the occasion, it is easy enough to eat one’s allowance of turkey and hide away one’s dishonest share of the wine; if this be returning thanks, why, then, gratitude is considerably easier, and vastly more agreeable, than “falling off a log,” and may be acquired in one easy lesson. But if more than this be required—if to be grateful is more than merely to be gluttonous, your true philosopher (he of the austere brow upon which logic has stamped its eternal impress, and from whose heart sentiment has been banished along with other vestigial vices) will think twice and again before leveling his serviceable shins in humble observance of the day. For here is the nut of reason that he is compelled to crack for the kernel of emotion appropriate to the rite. Unless the blessings that we think we enjoy are favors of the Omnipotent, to be grateful is to be absurd. If they are, then, also, the evils with which we are indubitably afflicted have the same origin. Grant this, as you must, and you make an offset of the ill against the good, or are driven either to the untenable position that we should be grateful for both, or the no more defensible one that all evils are blessings in disguise.