Morning journal and courier., 1880-01-01
 [For the JOURNAL AND CoURIER.]


 [For the JOURNAL AND CoURIER.I The old Woman and Her Three Cats One New Years morning, many years ago, | poor, friendless old woman who dwelt all
 alone in miserable hovel on the outskirts of
 broken down, dilapidated village, found l under her door step three little kittens, young that they had only just began to peep out of their eyes. Their mother had been ! killed few hours before by fierce bull mas tiff that belonged to a butcher hard by. His ! name we have quite forgotten, indeed, if we ! ever did know it. We don't think 1t was Smith. Their piteous cries touched the ! heart of the old woman, who, having outlivrd all her early friends and relatives, ached to l find something to love. When she found
 them they were trying to draw nourishme.t | from the dead body of their mother. I. Was all useless; for she was cold in death, her legy
 and tail sticking out stiff and straight as raut- rods.
 The old wapaan felt keenly their misery, for she well knew the pangs of hunger. The poor, | too, well know the sufferings from poverty. \ This is an experience the rich can never have. So the poor from their sympathy often divide almost their last crust with those more mi5er- able than themselves. But more often they don't divide Long suffering from poverty,
 
 sometimes gst from those only an inch or two above them, is apt to harden the heart. Thus | it is that many of the poor grow wicked and | desperate and try to drown their troubles in strong drinks, who, if they had but moderate prosperity, would remain decent sort of folk | and never, unless indeed it was prescribed by | doctor, drink anything stronger than good l wholesome tea and coffee, such as Young Fly ! son and old Government Java. Anybody would | be worse than fool that did not remain good, 1Ha-A Lx,,n o,,Sn a,Ott | ing pretty things and bright cheerful faces and loving hearts around them. The old woman, as we said, took pity on the wee little suffering things and carried them into her hovel She provided milk for them and ten- ! derly nursed and brought them up by hand. \ While small their playfulness and droll antics l amused her solitude. Such smart, cunning little creatures, she thought had never been | seen before. All this soon passed away and l they grew up into three great bouncing cats, | with the stolid dignity and sage gravity of \ department that belongs to cats when their l days of youthful innocence have fled forever. l Now it was that the poor old woman began | to suffer for her humanity. What suficed to
 support them as little kittens was not sufficient | for their sustenance as full grown cats. Their appetites became so enormous that 1t seemed as if they would fairly eat her out of house l and home. Her own slender means nearly vanished. Somehow she could have managed | to have sustained herself if alone; but the ad l ditional mouths to feed was too much. 1 As it was, she divided what she had with l them, still giving the larger part to the cats. | Yet, all four, the old woman and the three | cats, grew lean and weak from being half starved. As for the old woman, the skin on her face became more and more wrlnkled, the | crows feet under her eyes deepened into gull lies, while the solitary front tooth left on her | upper jaw stuck out from her shriveled mouth and lapped over and rested on her lower lip | like tusk. When she did laugh, for none are | so poor and miserable but what they do some l times laugh, her mouth did look queer with it's | circular ridge of bare gum, and that single tooth standing there alone and no longer or any except as a sort of ornament. Her most sorrowful days now came. For | the cats now began to reproach her, saying: You ought to have left to die when we were kittens and knew nothing, and so saved us from our misery; or else long ere this have I turned us out of doors to learn how to pick up our own living as cats generally are accus- ! toned to do. Instead of that you took us when we were young and innocent, simply 10 | minister to your silly love for amusement | Then you pampered us so we never learned 1 to take care of ourselves. Everybody, cou 1 tinued the cats, '' everybody says Life IS a I fight But we are as incapable of fighting as | so many Quakers. Beside the rats in this | neighborhood are unusually large and fero- | cious and as for getting our living by making l war upon such horrid, ugly customers, it caD- | not for moment be thought of, they Rre SO 1 strong and full of fight Again, whstev-r
 meat we have had, although cold, has always l been cooked. We are certain that diet of rats eaten raw would not agree with our ston 1 achs. We think it your duty to catch ths rats yourself in trap, kill, clean, split shem 1 open and -broil them for us, as peope do | spring chickens It is what you owe to ns
 for having given you so long the ben tt of | our company"
 1 This cruel and inconsiderate speech hurt | tho r1d - | true; and just here we can but express OUT 1 wish that :he telling of falsehoods was solely | confined to cats.
 l Nothing stings like ingratitude. The old l woman was so badly hurt that she picked up
 milk stool she had used in the more pros | porous days when she owned COW, siunk l away into the corner of her hovel, and, sitting l down there, burst into flood of tears, crying like child. Indeed. she was in her second l childhood, weak and demented, and so far | from being able to provide for ths cats, they l should have provided for her,-that is, if they had the ability to do so, which was ques- | tionable.
 We said nothing stings like ingratitude. | This is because when any one volunteers to do good and does good to another they feel so happy over it that they begin to love that | other. It is thus more blessed to give than to receive. That is one great reason parents so
 love their children, because they are working | and doing for them all the time. To have one turn upon you that you love hurts ten times ! as much as blow from an enemy.
 1 It was hard lesson to the old woman, that | ungrateful speech. Alas it came too late to l be of benefit to her, for she was verging on l eighty years, g period of life at which the 1 time left to derive much good from lesson is 1 not surprising.
 Still, our telling it may benefit somebody, as
 caution to be careful, what sort of blooded creatures they take to their hearts and homes,
 lest finally, like the cats to the old woman, they may turn upon them and sting them by | their ingratitude. Me0wl Fl. H.