Unlike most of his sex, the second John Chrysostom Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart (for we had given him the full name of the great musician, calling him simply Mozart for short) seemed to take an interest in the art of sewing. I may record as a proof of this that when my aunt Julia would be sewing on her machine, my hero would jump up into the vacancy between her spinal column and the chair, and there remain until he was dismissed. If he had been allowed a longer time to stay there than was given him, he would, probably, not have left so soon, but as to that I cannot positively speak.
Before recording the following incident I will repeat the aforesaid statement that every word of this biographical sketch is strictly true, and unto that fact I will set my signature and seal, any time you wish. (Possibly that is one particular in which this differs from most biographical sketches.)
Mozart’s saucer from which he was in the habit of eating and drinking, stood out in the kitchen by the sink. On the day of which I speak, he came in and told in plaintive accents that something was the matter. As I have remarked heretofore, he always left us in uncertainty as to what, for a time, at least. When questioned, however, he earnestly smelled of his empty saucer, and then, jumping up on the sink, put his paw on the cold water faucet, and then, descending, repeated his summons for aid. The saucer was speedily filled with water, and he drank long and eagerly.
This same incident was repeated in every particular, at another time, with the faucet in the bath-room upstairs.
On one occasion Mr. Mozart did a most disgraceful thing—one that was enough to bring disrepute on any family—namely, he ran away. There were several cats living around our barn in those days, and whether he eloped with one of them or not, I never heard, but certain it was that he disappeared, and no trace of him could be found.
But after sin, remorse is sure to come, and conscience speaks earnestly to the sinner, so “in the stilly night,” when “slumber’s chains had bound” the inmates of our house, some of them were awakened by mournful and heart-rending sounds coming from the rear of the house. Under some circumstances, we might have thought we were being serenaded; one of the members of the household was despatched to the back door, to admit the runaway! The lost had returned! the prodigal had come home! And as he rested once more on his couch of carpeting, how sweet it must have smelled to him (in which respect he would have differed from us), and how soft it must have felt, because his conscience was at rest, and because he could once more sleep the sleep of the innocent! Some of his feline friends had returned to the door with him, and had uplifted their voices with his, but only the proper inhabitant of the house was admitted.
Paranete.
