If soberest suit from crown to boot
Could chance uproot your Quaker bias,
How gladly so, in weeds of woe,
From head to toe my frame I’d cover,
That in the end the convert “friend”
Might thus ascend—a convert lover.
Charles Graham Halpin.
CAT-FISHING.
MANY and ingenious are the remedies that have been proposed for nocturnal cats, but none of them seem to have proved thoroughly successful. It was pointed out not very long ago that the extirpation of all fences which run in a direction parallel, or nearly parallel, with the Equator, would exempt cats from electrical difficulties in their internal organs, and would thus hush the cries that now render night hideous; but there is a practical difficulty in dispensing with these fences. Another remedy, which is a certain cure for nocturnal cats, is suggested by the fact that cats cannot live at a greater elevation than 13,000 feet above the sea. If we build our back fences 13,500 feet high, not a cat will scale their lofty summits; but the labour and expense of constructing fences of this height would be so great as to forbid their erections by persons with small incomes. Mere palliatives, such as bootjacks and lumps of coal, never accomplished any lasting benefits; they may discourage an occasional cat, but his place will instantly be filled. With all their habitual caution, cats are bold, and will often rush in where an average angel would fear to tread. To deal effectually with them is a task which calls for the highest form of inventive genius, combined with patience and a reckless indifference to Mr. Bergh’s opinions.