Each crook and corner of the chamber;
They hurry-skurry round the floor,
And o’er the books and sermons clamber.
The fate of that worthy Bishop Hatto stares me in the face. If they did not spare so exalted a personage, what will become of me? And as for keeping a cat, no, that may not be. I am not a Whittington. They are a treacherous race, and purr, and fawn, and play the villain—quadrupedal Nena Sahibs. I always hated them, and still more so since an incident I witnessed one year in Norway.
On the newly-mown grass before the cottage where I was staying, a lot of little redpoles—the sparrows of those high latitudes—were very busily engaged picking up their honest livelihood, and making cheerful remarks to one another on the brightness of the weather and the flavour of the hay-seeds. Intently examining their motions through my glass, I had paid no heed to a cat which seemed rolling about carelessly on the lawn. Suddenly, I perceived that it had imperceptibly edged nearer and nearer to the pretty little birds, and was gliding, snake-like, towards them. I tapped at the window lustily, and screamed out in hopes of alarming my friends; but it was too late; they flew up, the cat sprung up aloft likewise, caught a poor little fellow in mid-air, and was away with it and out of sight in a moment.
At vobis male sit, catis dolorum
Plenis, qui omnia bella devoratis!
Tam bellum mihi passerem abstulistis!
O factum malé! o miselle passer!
Norway! and why am I not there? It is too late this year to think of it. I must write to that friend, and say I can’t keep my promise, and join him thither. No, I must be content with a little trout-fishing in Wales or Scotland. At this moment a tap is heard at the door. An ingenuous youth, undergraduate of St. Sapientia College, and resident in the neighbourhood, had brought a letter of introduction from a common friend, begging me, as one deep in the mysteries of Norwegian travelling, to give the bearer some information respecting that country, as he thought of taking a month’s trip thither.