around our time-girt isle of life, and only hear the distant surging
of the great sea beyond.



ON CATS AND DOGS.

What I've suffered from them this morning no tongue can tell. It
began with Gustavus Adolphus. Gustavus Adolphus (they call him
"Gusty" down-stairs for short) is a very good sort of dog when he is
in the middle of a large field or on a fairly extensive common, but I
won't have him indoors. He means well, but this house is not his
size. He stretches himself, and over go two chairs and a what-not.
He wags his tail, and the room looks as if a devastating army had
marched through it. He breathes, and it puts the fire out.

At dinner-time he creeps in under the table, lies there for awhile,
and then gets up suddenly; the first intimation we have of his
movements being given by the table, which appears animated by a desire
to turn somersaults. We all clutch at it frantically and endeavor to
maintain it in a horizontal position; whereupon his struggles, he
being under the impression that some wicked conspiracy is being
hatched against him, become fearful, and the final picture presented
is generally that of an overturned table and a smashed-up dinner
sandwiched between two sprawling layers of infuriated men and women.

He came in this morning in his usual style, which he appears to have
founded on that of an American cyclone, and the first thing he did was
to sweep my coffee-cup off the table with his tail, sending the
contents full into the middle of my waistcoat.