"O happy love! when love like this is found;-- O heartfelt raptures! blessed beyond compare! I've paced much this weary mortal round, And sage experience bids me this declare.-- If earth a draught of heavenly pleasure share, One cordial in this melancholy vale, 'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair, In others arms breathe out the tender tale"-- _Shepherd._--The last line wunna answer-- "Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale" _Tickler._--Woman or cat,--she who hesitates, is lost. But Diana, shining in heaven, the goddess of the Silver Bow, sees the peril of poor Pussy, and interposes her celestial aid to save the vestal. An enormous grimalkin, almost a wild cat, comes rattling along the roof, down from the chimney-top, and Tom Tortoiseshell, leaping from love to war, tackles to the Red Rover in single combat. Sniff--snuff--splutter--squeak--squall --caterwaul--and throttle! _North._--Where are the following lines? "From the soft music of the spinning purr, When no stiff hair disturbs the glossy fur, The whining wail so piteous and so faint, When through the house Puss moves with long complaint, To that unearthly throttling caterwaul, When feline legions storm the midnight wall, And chant, with short snuff and alternate hiss, The dismal song of hymeneal bliss"-- _Shepherd._--Wheesht, North, wheesht. _Tickler._--Over the eaves sweeps the hairy hurricane. Two cats in one--like a prodigious monster with eight legs and a brace of heads and tails--and through among the lines on which clothes are hanging in the back-green, and which break the fall, the dual number plays squelch on the miry herbage. _Shepherd._--A pictur o' a back-green in fowre words. I see it and them. _Tickler._--The four-story fall has given them fresh fury and more fiery life. What tails!--each as thick as my arm, and rustling with electricity like the northern streamers. The Red Rover is generally uppermost--but not always, for Tom has him by the jugular like a very bulldog--and his small, sharp, tiger-teeth, entangled in the fur, pierce deeper and deeper into the flesh--while Tommy keeps tearing away at his rival, as if he would eat his way into his wind-pipe. Heavier than Tom Tortoiseshell is the Red Rover by a good many pounds;--but what is weight to elasticity--what is body to soul? In the long tussle, the hero ever vanquishes the ruffian--as the Cock of the North the Gander. _North_ (_bowing_).--Proceed. _Tickler._--Cats' heads are seen peering over the tops of walls, and then their lengthening bodies, running crouchingly along the copestones, with pricked-up ears and glaring eyes, all attracted towards one common centre--the back-green of the inextinguishable battle. Some dropping, and some leaping down, from all altitudes--lo! a general _melée_! For Tabitha, having through a skylight forced her way down stairs, and out of the kitchen-window into the back-area, is sitting pensively on the steps,