The cat Author:Agnes Repplier Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A Poet's Kitten I Have a kitten, my dear, the drollest of all creatures that ever wore a cat's skin. Her gambols are incredible, and not to be described. She ... more »tumbles head over heels several times together. She lays her cheek to the ground, and humps her back at you with an air of most supreme disdain. From this posture she rises to dance on her hind feet, an exercise which she performs with all the grace imaginable; and she closes these various exhibitions with a loud smack of her lips, which, for want of greater propriety of expression, we call spitting. But, though all cats spit, no cat ever produced such a sound as she does. In point of size, she is likely to be a kitten always, being extremely small for her age; but time, that spoils all things, will, I suppose, make her also a cat. You will see her, I hope, before that melancholy period shall arrive; for no wisdom that she may gain by experience and reflection hereafter will compensate for the loss of her present hilarity. She is dressed in a tortoise-shell suit, and I know that you will delight in her. William Cowper to Lady Hesketh. The Kitten Wanton droll, whose harmless play Beguiles the rustic's closing day, When, drawn the evening fire about, Sit aged Crone and thoughtless Lout, And child upon his three-foot stool, Waiting till his supper cool; And maid whose cheek outblooms the rose, As bright the blazing faggot glows, Who, bending to the friendly light, Plies her task with busy sleight; Come, shew thy tricks and sportive graces, Thus circled round with merry faces. Backward coiled, and crouching low, With glaring eyeballs watch thy foe; The housewife's spindle whirling round, Or thread or straw, that on the ground Its shadow throws, by urchin sly Held out to lure thy rov...« less