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 melee!  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.