BY ELEANOR LEWIS “MOUCHE”, VICTOR HUGO’S CAT. ILLUSTRATED BOSTON D. LOTHROP COMPANY WASHINGTON STREET OPPOSITE BROMFIELD Copyright, 1892, BY D. Lothrop Company. PRESS OF Rockwell and Churchill BOSTON TO Maud Howe Elliott WHOSE DEVOTION TO HER OWN PETS CONSTITUTES HER THE FRIEND OF EVERY OTHER, THIS BOOK IS APPRECIATIVELY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR...

SOME SCOTCH CELEBRITIES. Beautiful Edinburgh, her gray warmed into gold by the summer sunshine, lies half-asleep at the foot of her Castle Rock, and dreams, through the peaceful present, of her stormy, impetuous past. Each grain of dust there is historic. The traveler’s every footstep wakes some memory of old days. Over castle and palace, broad way and narrow close, over Canongate, Grassmarket, Arthur’s Seat, over hills that environ and streams that link, a magician has cast his spell—so intimat

A SELECT COMPANY. In the Life and Correspondence of the Rev. Lyman Beecher, under the far-away date of 1819, is this item: “Last week was interred Tom junior, with funeral honors, by the side of old Tom of happy memory. What a fatal mortality there is among the cats of the Parsonage! Our Harriet is chief mourner always at their funerals. She asked for what she called an epithet for the gravestone of Tom junior, which I gave as follows: The small mourner at this small funeral has since then had m

The pets and authors of the past may be briefly glanced at on our way to those of to-day. We may begin with the learned Justus Lipsius, erstwhile professor at Louvain. This worthy went daily to his lecture-room with a retinue of dogs, whose portraits, each with a commemorative description, adorned the walls of his study. Three have been individualized for posterity as Mopsikins, Mopsy and Sapphire. Tarot, Franza, Balassa, Ciccone, Musa, Mademoiselle and Monsieur, were, in their long-vanished lif

“THE UPPER TEN.” Biography is so genial nowadays, and full of easy gossip, that we cannot help wondering a little at her former stiffness. Nothing is below her notice now, but the personalia of earlier times slip into her pages more by accident than design. This, no doubt, is the reason why she referred so seldom or so briefly to the pet animals of royalty. There was a divinity in monarchs then, and she treated them with such ceremonious respect that if we had only her account to look to, we sho

A NOTABLE CANINE TRIO. In almost every library where the owner has an antiquarian taste may be found a pair of stout, leather-bound volumes, bearing a kind of “important-facts” appearance which the title, stamped in gilt, airily contradicts. Nugæ antiquæ , it reads. Trifles, in fine; anecdotes, memoranda of things passed by. The writer of the Nugæ was Sir John Harrington—a man of literary tastes, witty, vivacious, warm-hearted and sarcastic. He put into his collection a little about a good many

PETS IN ARTIST LIFE. For the artist pets have a peculiar value. Not only are they companions and live playthings—they are also “properties.” Portrait and landscape painters use them as accessories; animal painters and sculptors find in them their models. They live in close companionship with their human friends, and the tie between them is usually warm and lasting. An exception might be the cat whose fur was sacrificed to the early genius of Benjamin West. In default of brushes, the lad used fir

PUSSY IN PRIVATE LIFE. No animal has known greater vicissitudes than our pleasant little house-familiar, Pussy. He had his day of glory in the far past, when armies retreated before him; his day of divinity, too, as the mighty basalt cat-headed goddesses in many a museum still testify. And then, having had in his life-time all that heart of cat could wish, after death he became a mummy and received funeral honors. Just how it happened, no one knows, but a few thousand years later we find Pussy n

AN ODD SET. Our exclusive world is apt to choose its pets like its garments—in accordance with the fashion of the day. Still, there are always a few people who prefer choosing for themselves; and from this independence queer intimacies often result. Accident, too, not infrequently cuts the knot of custom; while, furthermore, it is true of all that propinquity works wonders. We come by degrees to like what we live with; and discover merits on long acquaintance that a shorter one would not reveal.

MILITARY PETS. Ælian tells us that among the Greeks at Marathon fought one soldier who had a favorite hound. As the two were friends and fellow-soldiers in life, so in death they still lay side by side upon that immortal battle field. And, says Ælian, their effigies were placed together on the memorial tablet, to the end that their fame might live long after their bodies were dust. Was it not finely done—to commemorate with the man that died for his country the animal that died for his master? T

ANIMALS AT SCHOOL. A good deal of time is devoted, especially of late years, to the education of animals and birds. The simplest form of training is that which adapts them to our service, and teaches them to recognize and obey the different words of command. Sir Miles Fleetwood would have been poorly off indeed if his horse had not understood the meaning of whoa! and had the discretion to obey it. A London magistrate under James I ., he was, according to Aubrey, “a severe hanger of highwaymen, a

A MENAGERIE IN STONE. In Rome there is always something to stir the fancy and quicken the pulse—always something to recall to the Present the magnificent Past. Now it is a column or statue, now a ruined palace, and now the vast fabric of an amphitheater. But the ruins are weighted with such tragic memories of by-gone Cæsars—their wars, their triumphs, their funeral pomp—as to be almost oppressively solemn. Let us then leave them for once, and go where the Past will suggest itself in some simpler