(_From the "Noctes" of Blackwood._)
_Tickler._--A Battle of Cats.
"How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon the slates!"
Miss Tabitha having made an assignation with Tom Tortoiseshell, the feline
phenomenon, they two sit curmurring, forgetful of mice and milk, of all
but love! How meekly mews the Demure, relapsing into that sweet
under-song--the Purr! And how curls Tom's whiskers like those of a Pashaw!
The point of his tail--and the point only is alive--insidiously turning
itself, with serpent-like seduction, towards that of Tabitha, pensive as a
nun. His eyes are rubies, hers emeralds--as they should be--his lightning,
hers lustre--for in her sight he is the lord, and in his, she is the lady
of creation.
_North._--
"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,
"And like another Helen fires another Troy."
Detachments come wheeling into the field of battle from all imaginable and
unimaginable quarters;--and you now see before you all the cats in
Edinburgh, Stockbridge, and the suburbs--about as many, I should suppose,
as the proposed constituents of our next city member.
_Shepherd._--The Town-Council are naething to them in nummers. The
back-green's absolutely composed o' cats.
_Tickler._--Up fly a thousand windows from ground-flat to attic, and
what an exhibition of night-caps! Here elderly gentlemen, apparently in
their shirts, with head night-gear from Kilmarnock, worthy of Tappitoury's
self,--behind them their wives--grandmothers at the least--poking their
white faces, like those of sheeted corpses, over the shoulders of the
fathers of their numerous progeny--there chariest maids, prodigal enough
to unveil their beauties to the moon, yet, in their alarm, folding the
frills of their chemises across their bosoms--and lo! yonder the Captain
of the Six Feet Club, with his gigantic shadow frightening that pretty
damsel back to her couch, and till morning haunting her troubled dreams.
"Fire! Fire!" "Murder! Murder!" is the cry--and there is wrath and
wonderment at the absence of the police-officers and engines. A most
multitudinous murder is in process of perpetration there--but as yet fire
is there none; when lo! and hark! the flash and peal of musketry---and
then the music of the singing slugs slaughtering the Catti, while bouncing
up into the air, with Tommy Tortoise clinging to his carcass, the Red
Rover yowls wolfishly to the moon, and then descending like lead into the
stone area, gives up his nine-ghosts, never to chew cheese more, and dead
as a herring. In mid-air the Phenomenon had let go his hold, and seeing it
in vain to oppose the yeomanry, pursues Tabitha, the innocent cause of all
this woe, into the coal-cellar, and there, like Paris and Helen,
"When first entranced, in Cranae's Isle they lay,
Lip press'd to lip, and breathed their souls away,"
entitled but not tempted to look at a king, the peerless pair begin to
purr and play in that subterranean paradise, forgetful of the pile of
cat-corpses that in that catastrophe was heaped half-way up the
currant-bushes on the walls, so indiscriminate had been the Strages. All
undreamed of by them the beauty of the rounded moon, now hanging over the
city, once more steeped in stillness and in sleep!
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