Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/530

488 I have invariably fallen, I have invariably alighted upon my feet.

Wednesday.—To-day I went in to see the grocer to consult with him as to my using one of the barrels in his cellar winter habitation. I offered to pay him in dead mice. I produced one as a sample. He asked what he could do with a dead mouse. I thought it a stupid question, for I have observed that he was never able to put live mice to any use, and I suggested that he should sell them, as he had been so successful in selling dead fish. What there was in my bearing that should so have offended the grocer I do not know. As he has no tail, I could not be aware of his rising wrath. I was, therefore, not a little surprised when he seized me by the neck and hurled me into the street. I had no time to remonstrate. My sensations were indescribable. Flying through the air in a revolving manner does away with apperception. It is well-nigh impossible to record one's impressions when one is in doubt as to whether he is upside down or sidewise over, and keeps on revolving in a maze of successive inversions. I obtained some exceedingly curious views of my surroundings, and I regret that I cannot recall them more clearly. But as I remember my swift and shameful transit, I see how much we have to depend upon our own uprightness to judge correctly the positions of others. The grocer, as I left his grasp, appeared to me to be standing on his head, but it was in reality I who stood upon nothing who mistook his attitude.

As I say, my speed was great, and though I alighted upon my feet, my distance from the grocer was incredibly long. Fortunately, I retained my presence of mind, and I turned, surveying the grocer with intense disapproval. I conveyed to him that from my point of view he had acted with undue haste and under grave error, and that I should trouble him no further. I then went down a side street, regretting that I had left the sample mouse where the grocer would be sure to see it and appropriate it.

Friday.—For some time I have been interested in the cultivation of my voice. There are certain tones that I find I can produce with ease, and I have developed them into sounds of extraordinary power. Of late, in the evenings, I have taken up a comfortable position on Back Fence Avenue and practised these tones; I keep to simple exercises, striving for a certain quality of great beauty and sweetness. One or two friends having a like ambition, we have formed an agreeable custom of meeting at the same spot every night and comparing our progress. Our exertions have caused intense curiosity in the inmates of the houses about us, and exclamations of wonder and awe are often heard. We expect to combine our several tones of excellence into a chord which will express great emotion. It will be called the "Yearn Chord," or the "Song of Unnumbered Woes," and will be of a plaintive, pleading character, with rising and falling cadences and inflections of great depth and resonance.

Monday.—After practising the fourth jump and being unsuccessful, I repaired to the butcher's to try and obtain a portion of meat. I walked in upon him early, and with a brisk manner, as one who should say, "It is necessary that I should eat to live." "Are you sure that you do not live to eat?" retorted the butcher.

The butcher is a brief and caustic man. The shortness of his speech is due to the influence of his pursuits upon his character. There is nothing quicker and shorter than a chop or a cut. A butcher might, with great success, found a school of expression for preciseness and brevity. I jumped upon his broad back where he could not reach me.

"Get off, you brute!" cried the butcher, but I dug my claws deeper into his soft, fat flesh. Then he bribed me, and when he tempted me with something worth my while, a red and juicy bit of steak, down I came, and seizing the meat in my mouth, ran out of the shop and ate the steak behind a garbage-can. Poverty, it is said, sharpens the wits, but it is hard to keep the wits as sharp as the hunger, which poverty also grinds out to a pretty point.

Tuesday.—After many failures, I have at last discovered a most desirable place in which to sleep. I have adopted one of the large white urns on the gateway of the entrance to the Park. It is a com-