"'Twas midnight's holy hour, and silence was brooding like a gentle spirit
o'er the still and pulseless world." Not a sound was heard, except
Robert's dog baying at a sorrel haired young man and a muchmussed girl,
who were returning home from a suburban picnic. As they passed out of
hearing, and the dog was peacefully cannibalizing on a link of sausage
that had been condemned by the board of health, owing to a piece of brass
padlock that showed through the silky nickel plating made of fiddling
string material, a soft cry of a child was heard in an upper room of a
mansion owned by a prosperous business man. The head of the house heard it
and sat up in bed to still the small voice, but couldn't, when the mother
of the child said that she had forgotten to bring up anything for the
child to eat in the night, and she must go down cellar and get a doughnut.
The man said he could never stay there and enjoy himself in bed and think
of his wife, groping around in the dark below stairs after it. After
telling him that he would probably come up with a pickle, ehe let him go.
Carefully he got out of bed, in an angelic frame of mind and a night
shirt, and barefooted he prepared to make the descent. As he stopped to
hold one foot in his hand, the instep of which had struck the rocker of
the baby crib, she told him the doughnuts were in the third crock in the
pantry on the floor. He said it was one evidence of a clear headed man,
that he could walk all over his own house in the dark. At the head of the
first pair of stairs he tripped on a baby cart and the tongue flew up and
struck him on the knee, but by hanging to the bannisters he saved himself.
At the foot of the stairs he tumbled over a block house and broke off a
toe nail. He said it was a mean man that wouldn't sacrifice a few toe
nails for his little baby, and he laughed. He fell over a dining room
chair, and sat down in another, and when he got up he felt that
though he was not proud, he was stuck up, for on his night shirt was a
sticky fly paper that had been placed in readiness to catch the unwary
early fly. After peeling off the sticky paper, and subterraneously
swearing a neat, delicate little female swear, he groped to the cellar
door, and began to go down.
[Illustration: THE STARTLED CAT.]
Now, if there is anything a boy ought to be punished for, it is for
surreptitiously eating a large slice of musk melon and leaving the rind on
the top stair. It tends to make a boy disliked. The head of the family
stepped with his bare feet on the piece of melon, and sat down so quick
that it made his head swim. It made him swim all over, and under, and
everywhere. But if he sat down soon, he got up sooner. If there is one
thing that a house cat should be taught, it is to sleep elsewhere than on
the top stair. When he fell and struck the sleeping cat there was a
crisis. He took in the situation at once. An occasional disengaged feline
toe nail, and a squall, told him in burning words that, while his title to
the seat was contested, it would be impolitic to wait for a commission of
unbiased judges to decide which was entitled to it. His opponent was
armed, and had possession, and he felt that it would tend to prevent riot
and bloodshed if he quietly gave up. But he felt that while in his present
position the cat was comparatively harmless, if he attempted to rise she
would bring the whole army and navy into action, and perhaps cripple his
resources. So he decided to jump up in a hurry before the cat had time to
think of her toe nails much. His position was not pleasant, to say the
least, but he jumped up in a hurry, hoping the cat would remain and
continue her nap. She was not a remaining cat and as soon as his weight
was removed from her person, she gave a yell as though frightened, and
began to walk up and down his legs, inside of his night shirt.
The question as to how many toe nails a cat has got, has never been
decided, but he says they have a million, and he can show the documents to
prove it. She went up him as though he was a fence post, and a dog after
her, and he flew around as though his linen was on fire, and yelled until
his wife came down to see what was the matter. By unbuttoning the top
button the cat was coaxed out, under protest however, and after a light
was lit there was seen about the maddest man in the world. He took a
candle and went down after the doughnuts, and after running his hand into
a jar of preserved peaches, and another of pickled pig's feet, he struck
the right one, and after hot grease from the candle had run down his
fingers he came up with a doughnut, and then the baby wouldn't eat it,
then he sat down side-ways in a cushioned chair, applied arnica and swore
till daylight. A single shot was heard in the cellar that
morning, and the young life of that cat went out. As he rode down on the
street car the next morning, people marvelled that he should stand up on
the back platform, when there were so many vacant seats, and when a
neighbor asked him to be seated he said, with a yawn, "No thank you, I
have been sitting down a good deal during the night," and he looked mad.
It is such things that drive men to commit crimes.