"What does that letter mean? In a
little time they will all be at my feet and yours, and I, oh, glory! will
be drugged or drunk all day long."
Dana Da knew his people.
When a man who hates cats wakes up in the morning and finds a little
squirming kitten on his breast, or puts his hand into his ulster pocket
and finds a little half-dead kitten where his gloves should be, or opens
his trunk and finds a vile kitten among his dress shirts, or goes for a
long ride with his mackintosh strapped on his saddle-bow and shakes a
little sprawling kitten from its folds when he opens it, or goes out to
dinner and finds a little blind kitten under his chair, or stays at home
and finds a writhing kitten under the quilt, or wriggling among his boots,
or hanging, head downward, in his tobacco jar, or being mangled by his
terrier in the veranda--when such a man finds one kitten, neither more nor
less, once a day in a place where no kitten rightly could or should be, he
is naturally upset. When he dare not murder his daily trove because he
believes it to be a manifestation, an emissary, an embodiment, and half a
dozen other things all out of the regular course of nature, he is more
than upset. He is actually distressed. Some of Lone Sahib's coreligionists
thought that he was a highly favored individual; but many said that if he
had treated the first kitten with proper respect--as suited a Toth-Ra
Tum-Sennacherib Embodiment--all his trouble would have been averted.
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