第22章 ON CATS AND DOGS(1)

What I've suffered from them this morning no tongue can tell.It began with Gustavus Adolphus.Gustavus Adolphus (they call him "Gusty" down-stairs for short) is a very good sort of dog when he is in the middle of a large field or on a fairly extensive common, but I won't have him indoors.He means well, but this house is not his size.He stretches himself, and over go two chairs and a what-not.He wags his tail, and the room looks as if a devastating army had marched through it.He breathes, and it puts the fire out.

At dinner-time he creeps in under the table, lies there for awhile, and then gets up suddenly; the first intimation we have of his movements being given by the table, which appears animated by a desire to turn somersaults.We all clutch at it frantically and endeavor to maintain it in a horizontal position; whereupon his struggles, he being under the impression that some wicked conspiracy is being hatched against him, become fearful, and the final picture presented is generally that of an overturned table and a smashed-up dinner sandwiched between two sprawling layers of infuriated men and women.

He came in this morning in his usual style, which he appears to have founded on that of an American cyclone, and the first thing he did was to sweep my coffee-cup off the table with his tail, sending the contents full into the middle of my waistcoat.

I rose from my chair hurriedly and remarking "----," approached him at a rapid rate.He preceded me in the direction of the door.At the door he met Eliza coming in with eggs.Eliza observed "Ugh!" and sat down on the floor, the eggs took up different positions about the carpet, where they spread themselves out, and Gustavus Adolphus left the room.I called after him, strongly advising him to go straight downstairs and not let me see him again for the next hour or so; and he seeming to agree with me, dodged the coal-scoop and went, while I returned, dried myself and finished breakfast.I made sure that he had gone in to the yard, but when I looked into the passage ten minutes later he was sitting at the top of thestairs.I ordered him down at once, but he only barked and jumped about, so I went to see what was the matter.

It was Tittums.She was sitting on the top stair but one and wouldn't let him pass.

Tittums is our kitten.She is about the size of a penny roll.Her back was up and she was swearing like a medical student.

She does swear fearfully.I do a little that way myself sometimes, but I am a mere amateur compared with her.To tell you the truth--mind, this is strictly between ourselves, please; I shouldn't like your wife to know I said it--the women folk don't understand these things; but between you and me, you know, I think it does at man good to swear.Swearing is the safety- valve through which the bad temper that might otherwise do serious internal injury to his mental mechanism escapes in harmless vaporing.When a man has said: "Bless you, my dear, sweet sir.What the sun, moon, and stars made you so careless (if I may be permitted the expression) as to allow your light and delicate foot to descend upon my corn with so much force? Is it that you are physically incapable of comprehending the direction in which you are proceeding? you nice, clever young man--you!" or words to that effect, he feels better.Swearing has the same soothing effect upon our angry passions that smashing the furniture or slamming the doors is so well known to exercise; added to which it is much cheaper.Swearing clears a man out like a pen'orth of gunpowder does the wash- house chimney.An occasional explosion is good for both.I rather distrust a man who never swears, or savagely kicks the foot-stool, or pokes the fire with unnecessary violence.Without some outlet, the anger caused by the ever-occurring troubles of life is apt to rankle and fester within.The petty annoyance, instead of being thrown from us, sits down beside us and becomes a sorrow, and the little offense is brooded over till, in the hot-bed of rumination, it grows into a great injury, under whose poisonous shadow springs up hatred and revenge.

Swearing relieves the feelings--that is what swearing does.I explained this to my aunt on one occasion, but it didn't answer with her.She said I had no business to have such feelings.

That is what I told Tittums.I told her she ought to be ashamed ofherself, brought up in at Christian family as she was, too.I don't so much mind hearing an old cat swear, but I can't bear to see a mere kitten give way to it.It seems sad in one so young.

I put Tittums in my pocket and returned to my desk.I forgot her for the moment, and when I looked I found that she had squirmed out of my pocket on to the table and was trying to swallow the pen; then she put her leg into the ink-pot and upset it; then she licked her leg; then she swore again--at me this time.

I put her down on the floor, and there Tim began rowing with her.I do wish Tim would mind his own business.It was no concern of his what she had been doing.Besides, he is not a saint himself.He is only a two-year- old fox-terrier, and he interferes with everything and gives himself the airs of a gray-headed Scotch collie.

Tittums' mother has come in and Tim has got his nose scratched, for which I am remarkably glad.I have put them all three out in the passage, where they are fighting at the present moment.I'm in a mess with the ink and in a thundering bad temper; and if anything more in the cat or dog line comes fooling about me this morning, it had better bring its own funeral contractor with it.