be, a cat--a Tom, you know, and I can fully understand a pussy's life and a pussy's joys and sorrows. "How different," I thought, as I mused one morning under a tree, "is the life of a cat from that of a dog. I'm the parson's cat to be sure, but then I'm my own master. Now, there is the parson's Saint Bernard dog, Dumpling for instance,--an honest, contented fellow enough, but, bless you, he isn't free. _I_ am. Dumpling can't do as he pleases. I can. I can go to bed when I like, rise when I like, and eat and drink, when, where, or what I choose. Dumpling _can't_. Really I feel I can forgive Dumpling for chasing me into the apple-tree last Sunday when I think of the dull life the dog leads, and how few are his joys compared to mine. Poor Dumpling needs servants to wait upon him, and he can't even walk a couple of miles, and make sure of his way home, or sure of not getting into a row, or not getting stolen, or something else equally ridiculous. The other day Dumpling actually sat on the door-step for two hours in the rain, till his great shaggy coat was wet through and through, because, forsooth, he didn't know how to get the door opened. Would I have done that? No. I should have walked up politely to the first kind-faced passenger, and asked that passenger to `be good enough to ring this bell for me, please, 'cause I ain't big enough,' and the thing would have been done. Could Dumpling unlatch a door or catch a mouse? Could he climb a tree and rob a sparrow's nest? or could he find his way home over the tiles on a dark night? I would laugh to see him try. "Now here am I on this bright, beautiful summer morning, as fresh as a daisy, as happy as a king. Catch me sleeping in the house on a summer's night! "How sweetly the birds are singing, but how much more sweetly they will taste! What a glorious day I had of it yesterday all through! Put in an appearance at the parson's breakfast-table, just for fashion's sake, and pretended to drink the milk my kind mistress placed before me. Fairly won the old lady's heart by rubbing my head affectionately against the canary's cage. `Dear Tom,' said she, `_you_ would never touch the pretty bird?' Oh! wouldn't I, though? "What a nasty old man that Farmer Trump is! I'm sure, if it wasn't that I have a taste for pigeons, and am a little bit of a Columbarian, I would never have thought of looking at his lot, anyhow. Besides, I had only eaten two when in came _he_, and out went _I_. Well, if he didn't take his gun and fire after me. Well, if he hadn't done anything of the sort, he wouldn't have shot his bantam cock.