Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/27



HERE was—if we may trust the Arabic chronicles as set down by that devout scholar, Damirei—no cat in the Garden of Paradise. Lion cubs and tiger cubs, little leopards and little panthers, Eve had in numbers without doubt; but no pussy to grace and decorate her domestic hearth. How far this loss was responsible for the lamentable ennui which, Charles Lamb says, forced our first parents to sin themselves out of Eden, it would be difficult to determine; but in that desolate world of toil which lay beyond the gleaming gates and sacred rivers of Paradise, no cat was found to comfort the sad exiles on their way. She sprang into existence at the Deluge; for during the long weeks in which the Ark floated over the waste of waters, the rats and the mice increased