raw steak, but no temptation was ever great enough to make her touch any
of these forbidden things. She actually seemed to have a conscience.

Only one thing on the dining table would she touch. When she was two or
three months old, she somehow got hold of the table-napkins done up in
their rings. These were always to her the most delightful playthings in
the world. As a kitten, she would play with them by the hour, if not
taken away, and go to sleep cuddled affectionately around them. She got
over this as she grew older; but when her first kitten was two or three
months old, remembering the jolly times she used to have, she would
sneak into the dining room and get the rolled napkins, carry them in her
mouth to her infant, and endeavor with patient anxiety to show him how
to play with them. Throughout nine years of motherhood she went through
the same performance with every kitten she had. They never knew what to
do with the napkins, or cared to know, and would have none of them. But
she never got discouraged. She would climb up on the sideboard, or into
the china closet, and even try to get into drawers where the napkins
were laid away in their rings. If she could get hold of one, she would
carry it with literal groans and evident travail of spirit to her
kitten, and by further groans and admonitions seem to say:--

"Child, see this beautiful plaything I have brought you. This is a part
of your education; it is just as necessary for you to know how to play
with this as to poke your paw under the closet door properly. Wake up,
now, and play with it."

Sometimes, when the table was laid over night, we used to hear her
anguished groans in the stillness of the night. In the morning every
napkin belonging to the family would be found in a different part of the
house, and perhaps a ring would be missing. These periods, however, only