The Muses, still with Freedom found, James Thomson. XXXVI. THE CAT'S PILGRIMAGE. "IT is all very fine," said the cat, yawning, stretching herself against the fender, "but it is rather a bore; I don't see the use of it." She raised herself, and arranging her tail into a ring, and seating herself in the middle of it, with her fore paws in a straight line from her shoulders, at right angles to the hearth-rug, she looked pensively at the fire. "It is very odd," she went on, "there is my poor Tom; he is gone. I saw him stretched `out in the yard. I spoke to him, and he took no notice of me. He won't, I suppose, ever any more, for they put him under the earth. Nice fellow he was. It is wonderful how little one cares about it. So many jolly evenings we spent together; and now I seem to get on quite as well without him. I wonder what has become of him; and my last children, too, what has become of them? What are we here for? I would ask the men, only they are so conceited and stupid they can't understand. what we say. I hear them droning away, teaching their little ones every day; telling them to be good, and to do what they are bid, and all that. Nobody ever tells me to do anything; if they do I don't do it, and I am very good. I wonder whether I should I'll ask the dog." be any better if I minded more. "Dog," said she, to a little fat spaniel coiled up on a mat like a lady's muff with a head and tail stuck on to it," Dog, what do you make of it all ?” The dog faintly opened his languid eyes, looked sleepily at the cat for a moment, and dropped them again. "Dog," she said, "I want to talk to you; don't go to sleep. Can't you answer a civil question ?" "Don't bother me," said the dog, "I am tired. I stood on my hind legs ten minutes this morning before I could get my breakfast, and it hasn't agreed with me." "Who told you to do it?" said the cat. "Why, the lady I have to take care of me," replied the dog. "Do you feel any better for it, dog, after you have been standing on your legs?" asked she. "Hav'n't I told you, you stupid cat, that it hasn't agreed with me; let me go to sleep, and don't plague me.” "But I mean," persisted the cat; "do you feel improved, as the men call it? They tell their children that if they do what they are told they will improve, and grow good and great. Do you feel good and great?" "What do I know?" said the dog. "I eat my breakfast and am happy. Let me alone.” "Do you never think, oh dog without a soul! Do you never wonder what dogs are, and what this world is?" The dog stretched himself, and rolled his eyes lazily round the room. "I conceive," he said, "that the world is for dogs, and men and women are put into it to take care of dogs; women to take care of little dogs like me, and men for the big dogs like those in the yard, and cats," he continued, "are to know their place, and not to be troublesome." They beat you sometimes," said the cat. 'Why do they do that? They never beat me.” "If they forget their places, and beat me," snarled the dog, “I bite them, and they don't do it again. I should like to bite you, too, you nasty cat; you have woke me up." "There may be truth in what you say," said the cat, calmly; "but I think your view is limited. If you listened like me you would hear the men say it was all made for them, and you and I were made to amuse them." 'They don't dare to say so," said the dog. "They do, indeed," said the cat. "I hear many things, which you lose by sleeping so much. They think I am asleep, and so they are not afraid to talk before me; but my ears are open when my eyes are shut." "You surprise me," said the dog. "I never listen to them, except when I take notice of them, and then they never talk of anything except of me." "I could tell you a thing or two about yourself which you don't know," said the cat. "You have never heard, I dare say, that once upon a time your fathers lived in a temple, and that people prayed to them." "Prayed! what is that?” "Why, they went on their knees to ask you to give them good things, just as you stand on your toes to them now to ask for your breakfast. You don't know either that you have got one of those bright things we see up in the air at night called after you." "Well, it is just what I said," answered the dog. "I told you it was all made for us. They never did anything of that sort for you." "Didn't they? Why, there was a whole city where the people did nothing else; and as soon as we got stiff and couldn't move about any more, instead of being put under the ground, like poor Tom, we used to be stuffed full of all sorts of nice things, and kept better than we were when we were alive." "You are a very wise cat," answered her companion; "but what good is it knowing all this?" "Why, don't you see," said she, "they don't do it any more. We are going down in the world, we are, and that is why living on in this way is such an unsatisfactory sort of thing. I don't mean to complain for myself, and you needn't, dog; we have a quiet life of it; but a quiet life is not the thing, and if there is nothing to be done except sleep and eat, and eat and sleep, why, as I said before, I don't see the use of it. There is some thing more in it than that; there was once, and there will be again, and I shan't be happy till I find it out. It is a shame, dog, I say. The men have been here only a few thousand years, and we -why, we have been here hundreds of thousands; if we are older, we ought to be wiser. I'll go and ask the creatures in the wood." "You'll learn more from the men," said the dog. They are stupid, and they don't know what I say to them; besides, they are so conceited, they care for nothing except themselves. No, I shall try what I can do in the woods. I'd as soon go after poor Tom, as stay living any longer like this." "And where is poor Tom?" yawned the dog. "That is just one of the things I want to know," answered she. "Poor Tom is lying under the yard, or the skin of him, but whether that is the whole I don't feel so sure. They didn't think so in the city I told you about. It is a beautiful day, dog; you won't take a trot out with me?" she added, wistfully. "Who? I," said the dog. "Not quite." "You may get so wise," said she. "Wisdom is good," said the dog; "but so is the hearth-rug, thank you!" "But you may be free," said she. "I shall have to hunt for my own dinner," said he. "But, dog, they may pray to you again," said she. "But I shan't have a softer mat to sleep upon, cat; and as I am rather delicate, that is a sideration." J. A. Froude. |