Carl Grabo, with whose name "The Art of the Short Story" is at once associated, has written this whimsical and imaginative tale of Hortense and the Cat. Antique furniture, literally stuffed with personality, hurries about in the dim moonlight in order to help Hortense through a thrillingly strange campaign against a sinister Cat and a villainous Grater. The book offers rare humor, irresistible alike to grown-ups and children.
It is a book that will stimulate the imagination of the most prosaic child—or at least give it exercise! Wonder, the most fertile awakener of intelligence, and vision are closely akin to imagination, and both are greatly needed in this work-a-day world.
Each reader, a child at heart be he seven or seventy, will bubble with the glee of childhood at all its quaint imaginings. They are so real that they seem to be true.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
| Chapter | Page | |
| I. | "... going to the big house to live" | [ 9] |
| II. | "And the darker the room grew, the more it seemed alive" | [ 20] |
| III. | "They could hear the soft pat-pat of padded feet in the hall" | [ 31] |
| IV. | "Highboy, and Lowboy, and Owl, and the Firedogs come out at night" | [ 48] |
| V. | "Jeremiah's disappeared again" | [ 60] |
| VI. | "I'll have the charm That saves from harm" | [ 74] |
| VII. | "... there should be Little People up the mountain yonder" | [ 93] |
| VIII. | "The sky was lemon colored, and the trees were dark red" | [ 109] |
| IX. | "Tell us a story about a hoodoo, Uncle Jonah" | [ 128] |
| X. | "Ride, ride, ride For the world is fair and wide" | [ 134] |
| XI. | "... take us to the rock on the mountain side where the Little People dance" | [ 145] |
| XII. | "There are queer doings in this house" | [ 169] |
| XIII. | "This is what was inside" | [ 186] |
Chapter I
"... going to the big house to live."