He had no need to do so.  He was made at home, and freely invited to our best not only in fish, but in chicken, for which he showed a nice taste, and in sweetcorn, for which he revealed a most surprising fondness when it was cut from the cob for him.  After he had breakfasted or supped he gracefully suggested that he was thirsty by climbing to the table where the water-pitcher stood and stretching his fine feline head towards it.  When he had lapped up his saucer of water; he marched into the parlor, and riveted the chains upon our fondness by taking the best chair and going to sleep in it in attitudes of Egyptian, of Assyrian majesty.  His arts were few or none; he rather disdained to practise any; he completed our conquest by maintaining himself simply a fascinating presence; and perhaps we spoiled Jim.  It is certain that he came under my window at two o’clock one night, and tried the kitchen door.  It resisted his efforts to get in, and then Jim began to use language which I had never heard from the lips of a cat before, and seldom from the lips of a man.  I will not repeat it; enough that it carried to the listener the conviction that Jim was not sober.  Where he could have got his liquor in the totally abstinent State of Maine I could not positively say, but probably of some sailor who had brought it from the neighboring New Hampshire coast.  There could be no doubt, however, that Jim was drunk; and a dash from the water-pitcher seemed the only thing for him.  The water did not touch him, but he started back in surprise and grief, and vanished into the night without a word.

His feelings must have been deeply wounded, for it was almost a week before he came near us again; and then I think that nothing but young lobster would have brought him.  He forgave us finally, and made us of his party in the quarrel he began gradually to have with the large yellow cat of a next-door neighbor.  This culminated one afternoon, after a long exchange of mediaeval defiance and insult, in a battle upon a bed of ragweed, with wild shrieks of rage, and prodigious feats of ground and lofty tumbling.  It seemed to our anxious eyes that Jim was getting the worst of it; but when we afterwards visited the battle-field and picked up several tufts of blond fur, we were in a doubt which was afterwards heightened by Jim’s invasion of the yellow cat’s territory, where he stretched himself defiantly upon the grass and seemed to be challenging the yellow cat to come out and try to put him off the premises.

PG EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

    Ambitious to be of ugly modern patterns
    Here and there an impassioned maple confesses the autumn
    Houses are of almost terrifying cleanliness
    Leading part cats may play in society
    Picturesqueness which we should prize if we saw it abroad
    Has the lurch and the sway of the deck in it

LITERATURE AND LIFE—­Short Stories and Essays