Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/87

 Rh are enamoured of the strife; but the desperate courage of a cat at bay can ill excuse the brutality which matches it against an animal of many times its strength. That a good sportsman like Wilson should have relished such a spectacle, puts us out of conceit with humanity.

In tracing the long and bitter persecution of the cat, there are two points to be especially considered. Its sinister reputation—obtained. Heaven knows how,—as the accomplice of witches, and the chosen emissary of the Fiend; and the evil character it won for itself—again. Heaven knows how,—as an animal equally perfidious and malign. In zoölogical mythology, and in the folk-lore of every land, it figures darkly, and without esteem. A Hindoo fable represents the cat as living with pretended austerity on the banks of the Ganges. The fame of the new Saint's piety, of his long prayers and rigorous fasts, inspires the little birds and mice with such confidence that they gather around him daily, and are daily devoured. From Alexandria we have the story, retold by Æsop and La Fontaine, of the cat bride who leaps from her husband's embraces after a scudding mouse. In an Alsatian legend, a cat comes again and again as a nightmare to torment a young joiner. He wakens once to find her stealing into his room through a hole in the chimney-place; whereupon he stops up the hole,