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 272 As for the cats who live in newspaper offices, in police stations, and in the unrestful society of fire companies, they acquire distinctive habits of their own, and appear strangely remote from placid dwellers by domestic hearths. The nocturnal habits of the journalist suit the "night-waking" pussy to perfection; but the din, the confusion, the vast littered spaces of the printing rooms would seem to make them the least desirable of earthly homes. Yet newspaper cats love these tumultuous surroundings, forget the serenity of gentler days, lose all aspirations towards sweetness and light, and abandon themselves unreservedly to the joys of scurry and excitement. Their kittens, roughly reared, tumble about under giant presses and hurrying feet, escaping destruction only by that marvellous faculty for self-preservation which bids defiance to danger.

The vulgar and deleterious habit of eating black beetles is begun so early, and continued so persistently, that the journalistic kitling, like Rappaccini's daughter, is inured to poisonous food. It grows up happy and healthy in an atmosphere apparently as uncongenial as that of the police station, where its little cousins are making a wide acquaintance with felony; or as that of the fire company's stables,