testimony could be relied upon, knows that I used to be troubled with
indigestion, and was sometimes a little nervous"----

"A _little_ nervous!" interrupted the Doctor, "why he would be as crazy
with the hypo as a March hare. He would insist that he was going to
die, or to the almshouse. He has made two or three dozen wills, to my
certain knowledge, under the firm conviction that he would be in the
ground in a week. A _little_ nervous, indeed!"

"Well," said Smith, "we won't quarrel about the degree of my
nervousness. But in regard to what I was going to say about cats. Some
years ago I occupied a suite of rooms in the second story of a house
rented by a widow lady, to whom I had been under some obligations in
my boyhood, and whom my mother always regarded as her best friend."
(Smith supported the excellent old lady in comfort for a decade, under
pretence of boarding with her, ministering to the last years of her
life with the care and affection of a son.) "The landlord of the
premises was the owner of a block of twelve houses--six on Pearl
street, and six on Broadway, the lots meeting midway between the two
streets. On the rear of these lots are the out-houses, all under a
continuous flat roof, some twelve feet high, twenty wide, and say a
hundred and fifty feet long. In the rear of the Broadway
dwelling-houses, are one story tea-rooms, or third parlors, the roofs
of which form a continuous platform, upon which you can step from the
second story of the houses."

"Well," said the Doctor, "what of all that?"

"There's a great deal of it," Smith replied. "I don't pretend to know
how many cats there were in the city of Albany. Indeed, I never heard