It is vain to struggle with fate, with the elements, and with the borrower; it is folly to claim immunity from a fundamental law, to boast of our brief exemption from the common lot.  “Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordained to lend.  When thou seest the proper authority coming, meet it smilingly, as it were halfway.”  Resistance to an appointed force is but a futile waste of strength.

The Grocer’s Cat

“Of all animals, the cat alone attains to the Contemplative Life.”—­ANDREW LANG.

The grocer’s window is not one of those gay and glittering enclosures which display only the luxuries of the table, and which give us the impression that there are favoured classes subsisting exclusively upon Malaga raisins, Russian chocolates, and Nuremberg gingerbread.  It is an unassuming window, filled with canned goods and breakfast foods, wrinkled prunes devoid of succulence, and boxes of starch and candles.  Its only ornament is the cat, and his beauty is more apparent to the artist than to the fancier.  His splendid stripes, black and grey and tawny, are too wide for noble lineage.  He has a broad benignant brow, like Benjamin Franklin’s; but his brooding eyes, golden, unfathomable, deny benignancy.  He is large and sleek,—­the grocery mice must be many, and of an appetizing fatness,—­and I presume he devotes his nights to the pleasures of the chase.  His days are spent in contemplation, in a serene and wonderful stillness, which isolates him from the bustling vulgarities of the street.

Past the window streams the fretful crowd; in and out of the shop step loud-voiced customers.  The cat is as remote as if he were drowsing by the waters of the Nile.  Pedestrians pause to admire him, and many of them endeavour, with well-meant but futile familiarity, to win some notice in return.  They tap on the window pane, and say, “Halloo, Pussy!” He does not turn his head, nor lift his lustrous eyes.  They tap harder, and with more ostentatious friendliness.  The stone cat of Thebes could not pay less attention.  It is difficult for human beings to believe that their regard can be otherwise than flattering to an animal; but I did see one man intelligent enough to receive this impression.  He was a decent and a good-tempered young person, and he had beaten a prolonged tattoo on the glass with the handle of his umbrella, murmuring at the same time vague words of cajolery.  Then, as the cat remained motionless, absorbed in revery, and seemingly unconscious of his unwarranted attentions, he turned to me, a new light dawning in his eyes.  “Thinks itself some,” he said, and I nodded acquiescence.  As well try to patronize the Sphinx as to patronize a grocer’s cat.