Staccato Notes of a Vanished Summer | Page 8

none; he rather disdained to
practise any; he completed our conquest by maintaining himself simply
a fascinating presence; and perhaps we spoiled Jim. It is certain that he
came under my window at two o'clock one night, and tried the kitchen
door. It resisted his efforts to get in, and then Jim began to use language
which I had never heard from the lips of a cat before, and seldom from
the lips of a man. I will not repeat it; enough that it carried to the
listener the conviction that Jim was not sober. Where he could have got
his liquor in the totally abstinent State of Maine I could not positively
say, but probably of some sailor who had brought it from the
neighboring New Hampshire coast. There could be no doubt, however,
that Jim was drunk; and a dash from the water-pitcher seemed the only
thing for him. The water did not touch him, but he started back in
surprise and grief, and vanished into the night without a word.
His feelings must have been deeply wounded, for it was almost a week
before he came near us again; and then I think that nothing but young

lobster would have brought him. He forgave us finally, and made us of
his party in the quarrel he began gradually to have with the large yellow
cat of a next-door neighbor. This culminated one afternoon, after a long
exchange of mediaeval defiance and insult, in a battle upon a bed of
rag- weed, with wild shrieks of rage, and prodigious feats of ground
and lofty tumbling. It seemed to our anxious eyes that Jim was getting
the worst of it; but when we afterwards visited the battle-field and
picked up several tufts of blond fur, we were in a doubt which was
afterwards heightened by Jim's invasion of the yellow cat's territory,
where he stretched himself defiantly upon the grass and seemed to be
challenging the yellow cat to come out and try to put him off the
premises.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Ambitious to be of ugly modern patterns Here and there an
impassioned maple confesses the autumn Houses are of almost
terrifying cleanliness Leading part cats may play in society
Picturesqueness which we should prize if we saw it abroad Has the
lurch and the sway of the deck in it

End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Notes of a Vanished Summer by
William Dean Howells

Notes of a Vanished Summer, by Howells
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