A LIVING FEE.
A Stuffed Cat-skin.
An eccentric and parsimonious old lady, who died in a small village in the State of Maine, some twenty years ago, always kept a half dozen cats about the house. She was a dried-up-looking old crone, and some ill-minded people had gone so far as to call her a witch, doubtless because of her oddities and her cats, “black, white, and brindled.” When one of these delightful night-prowlers departed this life, the old lady would have the skin of the animal stuffed, to adorn her mantel shelf. My informant said he had once seen them with his own eyes, arranged along on the shelf, some half score of them, looking as demure and comfortable as a stuffed cat could, while the old woman sat by the fireplace, croning over her knitting work.
STUFFED PETS.
The woman paid no bills that she could avoid, always pleading poverty as her excuse for the non-fulfilment of her responsibilities.
One dark and stormy night she was taken very sick, and by a preconcerted signal to a neighbor,—the placing of a light in a certain window,—help was summoned, including the village doctor, to whom she owed a fee for each visit he had ever made her. But this was fated to be the doctor’s last call to that patient.
“O, doctor, then I am dying at last—am I?”
The physician assured her such was the case.