Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/229

 Rh "There came a day when my father left us for a long journey, and all the animals shared our grief at his departure. Time after time his dogs trotted a little way along the road he had taken to Paris, howling piteously for their master. The most desolate creature in the house was Moquo. He trusted no one; but, for a while, would steal to the hearth, looking wistfully and furtively at my father's vacant place. Then, losing hope, he fled to the woods, to resume the wild and wretched life of his infancy; and, though we tried, we never could entice him back to the home where he no longer had a friend."

The faithful annalist is one who records with equal grace the life of court and cottage. Not like the gay old historians of the past who told of nothing but kings and the doings of kings, of battles and the glory of empire; nor like their modern descendants whose joyless work is confined to blue books and statistics, who devote pages to the amendments of some insignificant bill worrying its way through Parliament, but apologize to their readers for a chance allusion to the Queen. Rather should the chronicler pass con amore from high to low, and gladly back again; leaving the "suave and puissant" beasts of Baudelaire's fireside for their poor cousin of the woods, and returning with pleasure to the courtliest records of cat or kittendom ever penned