cried, for I was dreadfully frightened at the rattling! At last they put me in a house. I was afraid to stay in that house. Everything in that house was strange to me. The people were strangers. It seemed like a dreadful place. The people put their own things on all the good high places, and every time I jumped on a good high place, there would be a running and a screaming enough to scare you out of your senses. As if kittens would knock things off! As if kittens were clumsy as people and could not walk _between_ things! You know kittens, and cats too, need high places to jump up to.

“There was a small boy in the house and he had a whip. I need say no more. You all know or can understand, what it is to live in the house with a boy and a whip. But I was going to say that even the oldest of us have been kittens once and we know that a kitten must spring at things a-moving. I did. The boy rode on a wooden horse, and the horse had a tail just right to spring at. It was placed behind the boy so that he could not see me. But the people could, and they punished me for doing what I could not help doing. A kitten would not be a kitten did it hold back from springing at such a beautiful tail a-moving.

“I was whipped and put down cellar a great many times and even when I had grown quite large; for I was always of a lively turn.

“Oh what fun I had with the people after I learned to open the cellar door! Mornings they would say ‘I wonder who let the cat up?’ Sometimes just after I had been put down cellar for meddling with tassels or knitting work, they would find me on the best bed or in the best chair, or in the best room curled up on the best rug. At last these people took all their things and went away and left me there with nothing to eat. Every day I had to go forth to seek my food. Pinky-white has told you something of what this means. Hanging around back doors, kicked, starved, frozen, barked at by dogs, chased by cruel boys! Oh tongue cannot tell what I suffered from cruel boys! They yelled at me, they threw stones, they tormented me in every way they could. Just the sight of one would make me tremble. One day when I was on a clothes-pole I saw two boys coming, far away. They yelled at me and picked up stones. I scrambled down. I ran toward the house. I heard their shouts. I ran to the back door. The door was shut. I sprang up, caught the latch, the door opened, I ran in to a woman, looked in her face and said, ‘Oh do take care of me!’

“The woman was so much pleased with my opening the door that she invited me to live in that house, and I was glad enough to stay for 

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