Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/169

 Rh. Lord Chesterfield, to whom the urbane companionship of his cats brought many a soothing hour, also provided like an honourable gentleman for these little comrades who otherwise had been left homeless at his death. Sir Isaac Newton's affectionate solicitude for his cat and kittens is well known, while the records of humbler life show many similar instances of benignity. Fielding, in his pathetic "Voyage to Lisbon," vouches for the high regard in which the ship's cat and her troublesome young family were held by the captain and his crew. On the 11th of July, when off Spithead, he writes in his Journal:—

"A most tragical incident fell out this day at sea. While the ship was under sail, but making, as will appear, no great way, a kitten, one of the four feline inhabitants of the cabin, fell from the window into the water. An alarm was immediately given to the captain, who was then upon deck, and who received it with many bitter oaths. He immediately gave orders to the steersman in favour of the poor thing, as he called it; the sails were instantly slackened, and all hands employed to recover the animal. I was, I own, surprised at this; less, indeed, at the captain's extreme tenderness, than at his conceiving any possibility of success; for if Puss had had nine thousand instead of nine lives, I concluded they had all been lost. The