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 There was a silence when the squirrel finished this story. The animals looked at each other rather doubtfully. Only the indignant Budget, still remembering his woes, seemed entirely pleased.

"That's fine, that's fine!" he exclaimed. "An excellent story. I think they let him off very easily. He ought to have been hung up by his ears. That story ought to be printed where people could read it."

But Donny was shocked. "Rubbish!" he growled. "It's a terrible story. It could never be published."

The squirrel twitched his tail anxiously as he looked down on his troubled audience. "I don't know whether it's part of the story or not," he said, "but my cousin added that the squirrels ate the peppermint canes for Christmas dinner, and felt very poorly afterward."

It was left to Escargot, the French snail, who was always tactful, to turn their thoughts into a happier mood.

"The French word for peanuts," he said solemnly, "is cacahuètes. Very few Americans know that."

They all burst into a laugh. Cacawate, cacawate!

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 they shouted, imitating—his delicate pronunciation. And the big gray squirrel is nicknamed Cacahuète to this day.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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HE kittens always enjoyed stories about fish. They did their geography lessons much better after Fourchette showed them that the map of Long Island looks a good deal like a Japanese goldfish with a long streamy tail. The bays and harbours on the North Shore make it look, Fourchette said, like a fish that has had several bites taken out of its back. This also

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 was an idea that pleased the kittens. Hops made up a rhyme that he was proud of:—

Then they were surprised when Escargot explained that the word indent really means to put a tooth into.

Fourchette believed that young people should study the geography of their own homes, and make maps of them, so the kittens soon learned how to draw a picture of Long Island. It looked something like this:—

The eye of the fish is Jamaica, where you change trains. The wavy line along the fish's middle is the Motor Parkway. Of course the little square under the tooth-marks is the Roslyn Estates.

Now it is quite true that Long Island does not

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 look very large on a map of the world, though it is almost always marked. But the place you live in, wherever it is, is always big enough to begin your geography with. Escargot was very fond of pencil-and-paper games, and also very anxious to learn about America; so they used to get out the atlas and have great fun moving Long Island round the map. They discovered, for instance, that if you turn the Island around, and put its nose at the lower end of New York City (at the Aquarium, where a fish's nose would feel quite at home) it would stretch up the Hudson River almost to Albany. And then, going on, they would use Long Island as a kind of measuring stick, and travel across the country. Put Long Island's nose at Albany, then it reaches most of the way to Syracuse. And from Syracuse nearly to Buffalo; and from Buffalo to Ashtabula; from Ashtabula to Sandusky, from Sandusky to Fort Wayne. I am pleased to have it reach so exactly to Fort Wayne, because I had a very good roast-beef sandwich in the railroad station there, late one night, when I was tired and hungry.

When they discovered, in this game of pushing Long Island round the map, that it was about as

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 large as the State of Delaware, they were so excited they wanted to write to the Governor of Delaware and tell him about it. And Escargot was much surprised when he learned that Long Island was almost as big as La Manche, his native "department" in France.

Hempstead Harbour, the one the kittens knew best, is the fourth tooth-bite from the left. And if you look very carefully at their map you will see a little spike sticking out in that harbour. That marks Bar Beach.

Bar Beach is a spit of sand and pebbles that juts out into the harbour. In fact it runs almost all the way across, leaving only a narrow channel between itself and Glenwood Landing where the boatyard is. Once upon a time it was quite a lonely beach. Only a few years ago you could drive along there, to the foot of Beacon Hill, and undress in the old Dodge car, and bathe quite privately. Now the gravel works have made a wilderness of the hillsides, and there is a new concrete road, and Bar Beach is built up with bungalows and bathing pavilions, and anyone who undresses in a car will get arrested. But one reason why living on Long Island is in-

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 teresting is that you can see it changing so quickly, and changes always make people think. Ten years ago the Roslyn Estates were a forgotten little woodland, almost like the forest of Arden that Shakespeare wrote about. Ten years from now—in 1937—they will be a genteel suburb that shaves every morning.

Bar Beach comes into this story, because Bar Beach is famous for one thing; but you will have to be patient a few minutes to see just how.

There was a man who was particularly fond of the dark. He had a big front porch built on the side of a hill, so that it was high up among the trees, and from that porch, at night, he could see a fine speckle of stars. Every evening before he went to bed he used to go out, like the captain on the bridge of a ship, and make sure that the stars were all right. He did not know much about them, did not even know many of them by name, but still he was pleased that they were there. He liked to see how Cassiopeia and the Great Bear play tag with each other, going round and round the Pole Star. In winter he specially admired Orion with his dancing sprawl across the western

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 sky. He had noticed that a line through Orion's Belt leads to the Dog Star, just as though the Dog was following his master on a leash.

One evening this man had been sitting at his desk for several hours. He went out, about midnight, for his usual look at the sky. If you live in the city you don't think much about the weather, but one of the pleasures of the country is keeping an eye on the changes of wind and cloud. To his surprise, when he went on the porch he found that everything had changed while he had been absorbed in his work. A wet autumn fog had come up, very thick. When he looked off the far end of the porch it was so dark he could see nothing. There were no stars at all. There was the rustle and drip of the wet woods, and far down in the harbour the tugs that tow the gravel barges were whistling anxiously to each other. Somewhere out in the Sound a siren was groaning like an unhappy cow. It was a good evening to be safe at home, and he thought comfortably of his couch in the corner of the room. There he could lie, with a warm light above his head, and read a detective story and perhaps eat a piece of cheese while he was reading. That was one of his bad habits.

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 But he was sorry not to see the stars. Somehow, while he had been at work he had counted on that last look at the clear sprinkled sky. Rather disappointed he felt his way carefully back along the porch. You always had to be careful on that porch, for the chairs had a habit of shifting themselves round in unexpected places. Also you never knew if a kiddie-car or a velocipede might not leap between your feet. You had to look out for Donny, too, who liked to sprawl in the fairway. Whenever you were groping round in the dark in any place where Donny might possibly be, it was wise to say something out loud, such as "Well, old quadruped, are you right under my feet?" If he was there, he would reply with a thumping of his flap-flap tail, and you could steer around him.

Feeling his way back along the porch—and it was very dark that night—the man bumped onto a chair that had no business there at all. He was annoyed, because he bashed his shin, and he put his hand down to find out what chair it was. On the seat was a very queer object. It was cool, queerly hard-soft, pebbly or prickly to feel, and of an odd shape with points rather like fin-

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 gers. It surprised him very much. Feeling it, in the dark, he couldn't imagine, at first, what it might be. He took it indoors to look at it in the light.

It was a —one of those queer little five-pointed creatures you find on the shore at low tide, scattered about like asterisks. The children had been down to Bar Beach that afternoon. It was November, and winter was coming, and they wanted to say good-bye to the beaches they would not visit again until next spring. They had brought home a star-fish.

And then it suddenly struck the man that this was queer. He had gone out looking for stars. He couldn't find any, but there, in the foggy darkness, he had put his hand right on a star-fish—the last thing you'd expect to find on your front porch. Sometimes he remembers that, in nights that are very black and thick. Even if you can't find a star, there may be a star-fish that will do just as well.

Bar Beach will never again be a lonely little bathing place. Along that shore the gravel barges and bath houses and hot dogs and ice cream cones will soon outnumber the clams and the crabs. But as long as the water of Hempstead

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Rh The situation of the inhabitants of India indeed seems to furnish them with a peculiar claim to our attention. Placed as they are by Divine Providence, under the fostering care of Britain, they have extended over them by British laws, that security and protection relative to their persons and property which were unknown in India under their native sovereigns. Advantages, however, which their present lamentable state of ignorance prevents their fully enjoying: for, to say nothing of the gross impositions from their own countrymen to which the ignorance of the lower classes renders them constantly liable, the present state of their minds is such as to deprive them of a great part of the happiness arising from social life, and to leave them almost utterly unacquainted even with the nature and obligation of relative duties. Scarcely any thing can be more shocking than their ignorance of parental duty on the one hand, and of filial obedience on the other, unless it be that insensibility to the finer feelings of humanity, and to the obligations of truth, fidelity and justice, which is so painfully witnessed by most Europeans intimately connected with them.

It is acknowledged that much of this national prostration of morals and feelings may be traced to their system of religion. But it would be wrong not to advert to the degree in which ignorance aggravates all these evils. When idolatry existed both in Rome and in Greece, the sanctions of an oath were not wholly disregarded among them; perjury on the contrary was regarded with horror; falsehood in general with detestation; and the ties of social life which bind man to man, as well as those of probity, fidelity and justice, were felt and acknowledged to be of universal obligation. It will hence be easily seen, either that Hindoo idolatry in its principle and operation is far more inimical to public morals than was the ancient idolatry or that ignorance has exceedingly aggravated its evils. It will perhaps be found that both of these causes have had their full share herein; and that they have produced a reacti-


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 Harbour stays clean and untainted, there will be star-fish there for children to find, among the wet pebbles when the tide goes down.

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HEN Mr. Mistletoe was born the fairies held a meeting in the good old-fashioned way. And, just as happens in the stories, there was a malicious fairy among them, who was annoyed about something or other, and expressed her feelings by a mischievous magic. "My gift," said this bad fairy. "is that every evening, toward midnight, he shall have an irresistible impulse to raid the ice-box. And of the things he will find in the ice-box he shall be specially fond of cheese."

The ill-natured fairy's idea was that cheese, eaten largely at, is indigestible. She supposed that this would keep Mr. Mistletoe awake. But one of the other fairies came cleverly to the rescue. "My gift," said this far-sighted

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 spirit, "is that he shall have so excellent a digestion that not even the cheese shall disturb him."

Mr. Mistletoe grew up and fulfilled his destiny, which is simply another way of saying that he was, quite unconsciously, obedient to the commands of the mysterious fairies who had power over him. He did eat a great deal of cheese, late at night; and his digestion was so efficient that he was rarely the worse. All this is just a preface to the real story.

The story deals with a mouse in the pot-closet. The pot-closet was in the kitchen, and the latch was broken, so that the closet door stood a little ajar. This enabled the mouse, whose name was Ferdinand, to go out for cautious expeditions in the dark. It had to be done carefully, for there were many dangers. But Ferdinand had heard rumours, from mice who lived in other parts of the house, that under Mr. Mistletoe's couch, in his study, there were often magnificent harvests of cheese crumbs. That couch, you see, was where Mr. Mistletoe lay, late at night, reading detective stories and munching cheese. He was allowed to do as he liked in that room; no one was even supposed to do any housecleaning there without warning him first. That was a privilege

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 such as few men have; but Mr. Mistletoe was exceptional. Mrs. Mistletoe was very patient with him.

Ferdinand, therefore, having heard of this treasure trove, was eager to investigate. It was not easy. In the first place, it was only when the swinging door from the kitchen into the dining room had been hitched open that he could start in that direction. Many a time the closed door prevented him from getting farther. Even then, if he got safe into the dining room, terrors beset him. Footsteps creaked overhead, Donny breathed heavily, or he fancied he heard a cat. .Then he would fly wildly back to the safety of the pot-closet. It is all very well for a mouse to say to himself, safe in the shelter of the oatmeal boiler, that this time he is going to be brave and not let anything scare him. A mouse's legs move faster than his mind: when he hears a sound in the dark house he always runs first and thinks about it afterward. If you are a mouse, that is the safest plan.

One night Ferdinand got safely through the dining room, through the living room, and as far as the door of the study. He paused on the sill, and his small jewelled eyes glittered with

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 excitement at the scene before him. All was plainly visible, for Mr. Mistletoe had fallen asleep with the light still burning—as he often did: perhaps that too was the influence of the bad fairy. Those two large objects overhanging the end of the couch were evidently his feet. But it was the gathering underneath the couch that caused Ferdinand's nose to tremble with desire. It was a kind of picnic. Among several pairs of slippers and a book that had tumbled when their host fell asleep, sat several of Ferdinand's friends, enjoying crumbs of crackers and cheese. They waved to him gaily. "Hurry up!" they squeaked. "It's Roquefort!" Their mouths were so full as they spoke that Ferdinand could hardly make out what they said. But his nose had already explained it to him. Roquefort was the kind of cheese that he favoured most of all.

He was about to dash under the couch and join them when he heard heavy pads on the floor behind him. Donny, roused by the squeaking, was coming in. In another instant Ferdinand's retreat would have been cut off.

He did not wait to argue. With one frantic scurry, he looped out of reach of Donny's drowsy paws and was back in the dining room. But re-

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 turn to the kitchen was impossible. There in the doorway was Fourchette, her eyes green as two starboard lights. The desperate mouse gave a wild leap to the nearest place of refuge. It was the keyboard of the piano. The instrument was open, for Junior had been strumming there after supper; and the music rack was pulled out, leaving a small opening. Ferdinand fled into the inside of the piano just as Fourchette sprang for him. There was a heavy crash of bass notes as she landed fiercely on the ivory keys. Donny growled, Mr. Mistletoe woke with a start. Perhaps he thought it was a burglar, for he went first to the sideboard where the silver spoons were kept. Evidently he was puzzled, for next he went and looked carefully at the piano. Perhaps he decided that the noise was a dream, due to the cheese. But he noticed that the piano had been left open, and he closed the lid and the music rack. Ferdinand was trapped.

Unlucky Ferdinand! At first he gave himself up to despair. The inside of a piano is an uncanny place for a mouse to be lost. How he longed for the comfortable pot-closet, for the oatmeal boiler and the baby's saucepan where he was so much at home. As he ran miserably to

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 and fro among the crowded mechanisms of the piano his paws made queer ghostly shivers of sound on the wires. This angered Donny and Fourchette: he could hear them sniffing and miauling outside. After a hurried exploration of the place, which seemed to him as large and tall as a cathedral, he was convinced that no escape was possible. But then a surprising discovery elated him. The front of the piano was full of crumbs.

That needs explaining. Mr. Mistletoe's love of eating between meals, given him by the Bad Fairy, must have been inherited by his boy Junior. For Junior liked to nibble biscuits, cookies, or a slice of cake, while doing his music practice. The family had all wondered at the queer tone of the old piano. They had supposed that the unusual sound of some of the notes was due to the damp weather; a piano tuner would have been summoned long ago except that Mr. Mistletoe went quite wild at the thought of a piano tuner in the house when he was trying to work. But what the piano really needed was not a tuner but someone to clean out the crumbs.

Ferdinand proceeded to do just that. He made himself very comfortable, and was so busy eating that he almost forgot his dangerous situation.

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 When, the next day, Junior sat down to strum tunes, Ferdinand was badly alarmed for a while. The noise, heard from inside, was rather terrible, and of course Ferdinand did not understand it. When Junior played the Star Spangled Banner Ferdinand was much too shaken to stand up and salute. He supposed it was a very severe thunderstorm, and his whiskers went a little gray with fright. But the playing did not last long, and then he discovered a very generous deposit of fudge crumbs up toward the treble end of the keyboard, and that consoled him.

How long Ferdinand stayed inside the piano I do not know. It must have been several days, for he had time to get quite fat on his rich diet. Then came Helen's birthday (she was six). Mr. Mistletoe wanted to compose a folk-dance in honour of the occasion. He knew nothing at all about music, but he enjoyed sitting down some'times to play random chords and invent tunes of his own that came into his head. He played very forcibly, with much attention to the bass and a strong foot on the loud pedal.

The tune that he composed for the birthday was supposed to give a suggestion of Helen going upstairs to bed. It began with a series of chords

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 climbing slowly, reluctantly, upward. That was Helen going unwillingly up the stairs, her brown eyes looking sorrowfully over the banisters. Then there was a sudden scamper of music trotting down again. That was Helen thinking of a good excuse for one more return to civilization. There followed a little airy skirmish of melody representing her pleasure at being allowed to stay a few moments longer. Then the tune, very solemnly, pursued her upstairs again to the nursery with strong parental chords, hoisted her into bed with a definite thump, and said "No nonsense, now! Not another word!"

Mr. Mistletoe was pleased with this music. He played it with enthusiasm, and the uproar was so vast that poor Ferdinand was frightened almost out of his wits. He ran wildly to and fro inside, thinking the world was coming to an end. And now he had grown so stout that when he trod on the delicately balanced little hammers his weight made them strike the wires, and dainty trills of sound were added to the notes Mr. Mistletoe was playing. It was really a duet: Mr. Mistletoe outside and Ferdinand inside. The little undercurrent of swift shimmering grace-notes, contributed by the frightened hurry of

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 Ferdinand's racing paws, gave the tune just the sweet pathos of a little girl climbing reluctantly to bed. But Mr. Mistletoe did not guess this. He took all the credit to himself, and merely believed that he was playing better than he had ever done before. Really, he thought, the old piano is in better condition than I supposed. It's getting back its tone. I do believe I should have been a composer. This is really wonderful! He finished the tune with a rolling volley of harmony and sat back waiting for applause.

To his amazement, although his hands were now off the keyboard, a thin little music went on, streaking runs of notes, twinkling up and down. He stared, and then he pulled open the music rack. Out flashed Ferdinand, and was on the floor with one spring. Luckily the kitchen door was open, and in the twinkling of four feet he gained the safety of the pot-closet.

Mr. Mistletoe was looking the other way at that instant, so he did not see Ferdinand dart out and speed across the room. He often wondered why he could never again play the tune Helen Going To Bed with such skill and such a richness of wistful melody. Certainly he never guessed that in a way it all went back to the Bad Fairy

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 who makes both mice and men crave cheese late at night.

Ferdinand still lives in the pot-closet. His adventure cured him of his habit of dangerous roaming. It is just as well, for his hearing is no longer as sharp as a mouse's needs to be. The rolling thunders of sound that he lived with inside the piano made him a little deaf.

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HEN the kittens were asked what they would like to do when they grew up and had to earn their living, there were two ambitions they often mentioned. Hops used to say he would try to get a job at the Fish Hatchery in Cold Spring Harbour. Going to picnics at Lloyds Neck they always passed through Cold Spring, and Hops would look earnestly at those interesting little pools and sluices where the young fish were bred. It was not certain whether any cats were employed in that establishment,

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 but if there was ever a vacancy—perhaps as a night watchman or something of that sort—Hops intended to apply.

Malta's dream was to work at the Aquarium. She had heard that there was a cat there, and she imagined it must be the pleasantest position in the world. Malta had never seen the Aquarium, but it had been described to her, and it sounded marvellous. All those big glass tanks, with fish as bright and pretty as flowers turning and shimmering in the clear water!

It was very hot weather. It was the weather when Donny's long thick hair has to be cut, and you learn, after much patient work with a pair of scissors, that he is not nearly such a big dog as he seems. He looks rather absurd after a good clip, because you don't cut his shaggy head or his curly plumy tail, and with his body so diminished he looks like a small black and white lion. But he is so much more comfortable that no one minds.

It was the weather when two or three times a day the children put on their bathing suits and spray each other with the hose, and big motor trucks stand dripping in front of drugstores delivering ice cream, and you are surprised to see

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 so many coal wagons going about. Nothing sounds so hot, on a July day, as next winter's coal rumbling into the cellar. And on those blazing days you don't need the gong to call you for lunch, because you hear the jug of iced tea chiming like a soft cool bell when it is carried in to the dining room.

The members of the Grape Arbor Tea Room, fortunate in having such a cool retreat in the hot season, thought of doing something for people in the sweltering city. They had the great idea of inviting the Aquarium Cat to come out and spend a country afternoon. And Malta particularly, who had dreamed of being an Aquarium cat herself some day, was thrilled at the thought of actually meeting such a celebrity.

Fourchette wrote a letter, on her best notepaper, which had a very twirly ornamental F stamped on it in green. It was addressed to. The Aquarium Cat. The Aquarium, Battery Park, New York City. It had to be rewritten several times, to get it just right, because they all made suggestions as to the best way to address such a famous person. It said:—

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The members of the Grape Arbor Tea Room and Country Day School would be so pleased if you would honour us with a visit. Knowing how busy you must be, and your many responsibilities, we leave the choice of a date to you. In the hot weather we serve a cold salmon salad, with Spratt's biscuits, every afternoon at 4:30. Let us know what day you will come and Donny will meet you at Roslyn station. Donny is a dog, but very understanding. Friday is the best day, the Sea Food Market has everything fresh then. Respectful regards from your many admirers, and enclosing L. I. R. R. timetable, which gives approximate time of arrivals at Roslyn,

Yours,

Fortunately they consulted Christopher about the letter before they mailed it. Because Fourchette, not quite understanding about dollarmarks, had written "We serve cold salmon salad every afternoon at $4.30." She thought that a dollar sign should be put in front of all figures.

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 Christopher explained the mistake, and it was corrected.

Malta at once asked if she could keep the Aquarium Cat's reply, if one came, to start an Autograph Collection.

After that the kittens hung about the post office until they almost wore out the letter-box opening it. They kept bothering Mrs. Breen by asking her if she was quite sure there wasn't a letter. She was almost tempted to write them one herself and put it in the box just to keep them quiet. You see, the Aquarium Cat was so surprised by the invitation that it took him some time to answer. At last a letter came, on official Aquarium notepaper which had little pictures of fish printed on it. It was very carefully written and punctuated. Evidently the Aquarium Cat had taken great pains:

The Aquarium New York, N. Y. July 15, 1927.

In reply to yours of the 8th inst., would say, am very pleased by your friendly invitation and accept same with pleasure.

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 Am very fond of salmon myself, that will be a treat. If I have any luck will try to bring with me one or two small specimens for your pupils, in the interests of science.

Compliments to your Mr. Donny, you may inform him I will take train arriving Roslyn approximately 4.05 (Daylight Saving) on Friday.

Yours truly, (Mr.).

"What are specimens?" asked Hops and Malta. "Does it mean presents?"

There was great excitement the afternoon Jellicoe arrived. Fourchette and the kittens went with Donny to the station. Meeting trains at Roslyn is always an adventure, for they are real steam-trains with nice old-fashioned hissing locomotives. Waiting by the level crossing you can see the train coming far down the track. A spire of white steam shoots up and you hear the whistle. Then the crossing watchman blows his whistle and swings down the black and white gates. Then the gong begins to clang, and the engine rumbles past, and the passengers get off. Stout ladies and children have to be helped as

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 it is a long step down to the ground. It will be sad when Roslyn is a smart suburban station like Great Neck or Garden City.

At first they were worried, because they didn't see a cat getting off anywhere. Then, as they might have guessed, they saw him descending from the smoker, at the front of the train. He was a handsome gray, rather thin. He carried a little wicker basket. Hops and Malta tried to be polite, and restrained themselves from asking if he had the specimens all right. While no one was looking, however, they managed to smell the little basket. Immediately they began to purr.

"You mustn't mention it to anyone," said Jellicoe, when they were in the car, "but I managed to get some small trout from one of the tanks, for you and the children. It is against the rules, but sometimes one is able to make an exception." He opened the basket, and there, carefully wrapped in cool cabbage leaves, were three very tiny fish, about an inch long. Jellicoe had fastened them to little sticks so they could be sucked like lollipops.

Fourchette was greatly pleased, and sucked hers slowly and with enjoyment. The kittens gobbled theirs down at once.

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 The tea was a great success. Escargot and all the others greeted Jellicoe with respectful politeness. Fourchette had been a little embarrassed when she learned he was a gentleman cat: she had feared he might think it was too forward of her to have invited him. But he was so easy in his manners, so plainly a cat of large worldly experience, that they were all delighted. Even Donny was quite friendly.

Jellicoe ate enormously. He seemed very hungry, and they began to suspect that he did not get as much fish at the Aquarium as they had imagined.

"How nice to be out here in the country," he said, when the cold salmon had been finished. "Of course I had heard of the Roslyn Estates, but I had no idea the neighbourhood was so attractive. This is a very refreshing change for me."

"I'm afraid it must seem very informal, after your important work at the Aquarium," said Fourchette. She had very little idea just what kind of work Jellicoe did there, but she felt certain it was important. "What a lovely place that must be to live."

"Oh, I don't know," said Jellicoe. "It gets

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 very trying, to see all those fish and never be able to get at them. I would never advise anyone to take up the Aquarium as a career. The smell makes one constantly hungry, and the barking of the seals gets on your nerves. You know, they sound exactly like dogs, and they yelp continually. In fact," he added hastily, suddenly realizing that Donny might be offended, "they bark much more than dogs do. I rather enjoy a nice dog-bark, but it doesn't seem natural coming from a seal."

"But how deliciously cool it must be," said Escargot, who did not enjoy the heat and liked thinking about wetness.

"You'd be surprised to see how many people come in, on hot days, because it sounds like a cool place. In fact, a queer thing happened the other day"

Jellicoe smiled a little to himself. Evidently it was the beginning of a story, and they all settled themselves to listen.

There were two very small (and active) girls who lived in Baltimore. Their family was a convenient one, for there were not only the two smallandactive girls but they had two parents.

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 They called these parents Daddy and Mother, but as a matter of fact the real names of the parents were Uncle Felix and Aunt Isabel, and I shall refer to them as such.

Baltimore is a lovely city but in hot weather it is very hot indeed. You will sometimes hear people talk about pavements hot enough to fry an egg on, but Baltimore is the only town I know of where it has actually been done. It was on the pavement just outside Uncle Felix's office that the egg was fried, so you can understand how glad he was to get a vacation.

For their vacation Uncle Felix and Aunt Isabel were going to take the smallandactive girls (whose names were Lannie and Sistina) to an island called Martha's Vineyard. They had read in a booklet that this island was Swept by Ocean Breezes, and they bought their tickets at once. To get there they had to take a train to New York, then a steamer to New Bedford, and another steamer from New Bedford to Vineyard Haven. You will find these places on the map of Massachusetts.

It was a roasting July morning when Uncle Felix and Aunt Isabel, after all the labours of packing up and closing the house, got the two

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 smallandactive girls on board a B. & O. train. Like a wise parent, Uncle Felix did not want to spend all the money at the beginning of the vacation; he hoped to have some left to get home with, after the egg-frying season was over. So he thought it would be better to travel in a day-coach, not in a Pullman. But a parent rarely knows what is going to happen. It was so hot, so dusty, and the smallandactive girls were so lively, so sticky, and so well-sprinkled with soot, that by the time the train had reached Philadelphia Uncle Felix had not only moved them all back to a Pullman car, but had even engaged one of those expensive private kennels called a drawing room where he and Aunt Isabel could conceal the energy of the children from the other passengers.

By the time the train had reached Trenton Junction Lannie and Sistina had three times been mopped down with ice-water in paper drinking cups. By the time the train got to Jersey City they were all rather tired and excited. By the time they had crossed the ferry to New York, and had got the baggage on board the New Bedford steamer, all were ready for some innocent amusement. There were two hours to pass be-

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 fore they need return to the steamer, and Uncle Felix thought it might be cool at the Aquarium, which was not far away.

I well remember (said Jellicoe) when they arrived, because of all the many children at the Aquarium that afternoon those two were the most smallandactive. They both had observant blue eyes, and little cotton pinafores, and large straw hats with little holes in the crown for ventilation. I was strolling about near the turtle tank when they rushed up to me and said I was theirs. Sistina, who was only two and a half, seriously thought I was her own cat from Baltimore, and it was difficult for me to persuade her otherwise. Then Uncle Felix, who had the anxious air of a parent who has been through a good deal, and has more ahead of him, spoke to me very politely. I could see at once that he was a man who understood cats.

"Since you have taken such a fancy to the smallandactive girls," he said, "perhaps you would keep an eye on them for a few moments so that Aunt Isabel and I can look at the fish."

It was not a question of my having taken a fancy to them; it was they who had taken a fancy to me. They were both embracing me at

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 once, and the three of us were all tangled up together in such a way that probably Uncle Felix had imagined I was embracing them. The weather was warm for that sort of thing. But it is part of my job at the Aquarium to be polite to the public, so I assented. While Uncle Felix and Aunt Isabel had a nice refreshing stroll along the cool glass tanks, I took care of Lannie and Sistina.

I knew they would be amused by the penguins. There are two penguins who live in a tiled pool. Unless you are familiar with penguins you would not believe how comic they are to watch. There is a wooden platform in the water, up which they waddle, and then, crossing a gangplank, they love to totter round the upper rim of the enclosure. Crowds of people lean over the low railing, only a few inches from them, but the penguins are not at all shy. They toddle about, skipping over the braces of the railing with an absurd little tripping stumble, quite as funny as Charlie Chaplin.

Lannie and Sistina, climbing up by the railing, were enchanted at the sight of these doddering penguins. And indeed their nice white-tiled pool, like a big bathtub, with the green water in it,

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 was very alluring. Just about that time the seals were being fed, and everyone else went to watch; I was left alone with the two children. Of course I was on the floor, as I am not allowed to jump up on the railings. I was trying to warn them not to climb over too far when Sistina remarked "Take a bath with funny duckie" and slipped inside the rail. Lannie followed her, and the two began trotting round and round the inside rim just as the penguins had been doing.

I looked anxiously for Uncle Felix and Aunt Isabel, but they were over at the other side of the building admiring the Groupers fish. And then, to my amazement, I saw the two penguins, each one wearing one of the children's straw hats, calmly climb over the rail and flop down onto the floor. Toddling about, with their little outstretched flippers and the big straw hats, they looked exactly like a smaller Lannie and Sistina.

About this time Uncle Felix began to realize it was getting late. And just then he and Aunt Isabel felt something cool and moist slipped into their fingers. Looking down, in the half darkness of the Aquarium, all they saw were large straw hats and small dark flippers, which they naturally thought were very grimy hands.

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 "Oh, here you are, children," they said. "Did you thank that nice cat for showing you the sights? Come now, we must hurry." And before I could catch them they were gone, hurrying out across the Park and into a taxi, the two penguins trotting along with them just like two very tiny children.

I was so afraid that in some way I would be blamed for all this, that I kept carefully in the background. But I could see from a distance that Lannie and Sistina were having a grand time. They trundled round about the pool until they were tired, then they splashed into it (it is quite shallow) and floundered about in great comfort. Some of the spectators looked at them in surprise, and went round again to read the sign about Not Handling or Feeding the Penguins: but it was such a warm day, anyone who had doubts probably thought it might be an illusion due to the heat. As for Uncle Felix and Aunt Isabel, they had so much to think about, and were so pleased at the quiet way the penguins sat in the taxi, that they did not look at them carefully until the New Bedford boat had left her pier and it was time to wash the children for supper.

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 When they found that they had two penguins with them instead of two children, the troubled parents were very upset. Uncle Felix, who had been looking forward all day to the quiet evening on the steamer, with a pipe to smoke and a book to read, at first refused to believe it. He thought that if they gave the two small creatures a good scrub, the dark colour (which he insisted was only the stains of travel) would come off and they would prove to be Lannie and Sistina. Finally he was convinced, and rushed to see the Captain. The Captain refused to put the steamer back, and the most Uncle Felix could do was to send a radio to the Director of the Aquarium. I saw the message when it arrived. It said:

Fear some mistake have two penguins here see if two smallandactive children left in penguin tank consult Aquarium Cat seven thirty is their bedtime arrive tomorrow.

The radio operator made Uncle Felix pay for "small and active" as three words although it was carefully explained to him that in that family it was always written as one word.

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 Of course when the radio telegram arrived the Director consulted me at once, and I had to explain the whole affair. He admitted that I was in no way to blame. The chief difficulty now was to persuade Lannie and Sistina to leave the pool, where they were playing house on the wooden platform. It was their bedtime, so they were feeling specially lively. But my likeness to their own cat in Baltimore was very useful: with me they felt entirely at home.

"There's only one thing to do," said the Director, after sending a radio to Uncle Felix that the children were quite safe. "If they won't leave the pool, you'll have to spend the night there with them. If we force them to come out they'll yell, and keep the fish awake all night."

It was the most uncomfortable night I ever spent. The Director himself served supper for all three of us on the platform in the pool. Lannie and Sistina tried to force me to go bathing with them, but at that I drew the line. At last they fell asleep, clutching me very tight. I wish I knew the address of their cat in Baltimore, I should like to send him a postcard of greetings and sympathy.

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 on on each other; the system tending to produce and perpetuate ignorance of the worst kind, and this ignorance, on the other hand, tending to add to the horrors of the system.

That the system has had its full share in the degradation of morals and manners, few will be inclined to doubt who consider its nature and tendency. Not only are the people in general destitute of every just idea of God; they can scarcely be said to be fully impressed with the importance of a single principle of morality. In addition to their being wholly unconscious of that accountability to the Judge of All, which in Europe is written on almost every heart, as well as ignorant both of the justice and mercy of God, of the evil which follows immorality and sin even in this life, and of the happiness which results from piety, probity, truth, fidelity and integrity; they have no just idea of the objects of nature so constantly before them, of the sun, moon, and stars—the clouds, the winds, the rain;—the earth on which they dwell,—the groves, trees and plants which surround them—the domestic animals which they nourish; nor, in a word, of the flowing stream, the buzzing insect, or of the plant which creeps over their lowly shed. To them the sun retires behind a mountain, the rain from heaven is given by a god they are in the habit of despising and vilifying, the rainbow is the bow of, the river is a deity, the birds, the beasts, and even the reptiles around them are animated by the souls of their deceased relatives;—falsehood and uncleanness are nothing, perjury a trifle, and a failure in fidelity and probity, often a subject of praise; while ablution in the waters of a river is deemed a due atonement for almost every breach of morality.

That this state of misery is heightened by their ignorance, will be evident when we consider the little knowledge they possess even


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 Meanwhile the penguins went on with Uncle Felix and Aunt Isabel. They sat up to supper on board the steamer and behaved beautifully; when they were tucked into their berths they slept without any trouble. By breakfast time Aunt Isabel refused to part with them. She took them on to Martha's Vineyard with her, while poor Uncle Felix rushed back to New York by train. He arrived in a dreadful state of agitation and humidity.

The Director was equally upset-when he found that Uncle Felix had not brought the penguins back with him. He had had to close the Aquarium to the public all that morning. For, as he said, if he exhibited two quite normal children instead of the amusing penguins his patrons expected, there would be complaints. The situation was painful. At first the Director refused to surrender Lannie and Christina until the penguins had been returned. They got Aunt Isabel on the telephone in Martha's Vineyard: she said that the penguins were so happy there she could not hear of their being taken away. The Director repiied fiercely that this was not fair. Children, he said, were numerous, but there are only a few penguins in New York.

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 While the Director was talking to Aunt Isabel on the phone, Uncle Felix simply seized Lannie and Sistina and ran with them to a taxicab. He hurried them onto a train, and they were in Martha's Vineyard that evening. I hear that they are having a perfectly wonderful holiday. The penguins are delightful playmates. They sleep in the same room with the children, and to see the four go in bathing together is one of the sights of the island. Uncle Felix sent me a postcard saying so.

Even the Director, when he went up to the Vineyard to try to cajole the penguins back, admitted it would be a pity to take them away from a place where they were having so much fun. If only, he says, the smallandactive girls don't embrace them to death.

"But what did the Aquarium do without any penguins?" the kittens asked.

"The Director had to get two more sent down at once from the Bronx Zoo," Jellicoe explained. "They have several up there."

Escargot spoke thoughtfully. "I always imagined that penguins must be very interesting

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 birds," he said, "because a famous French writer, Anatole France, once wrote a book all about them. We must read it some day."

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F COURSE it was a great day when we got gas in the Roslyn Estates. But Fourchette still liked to remember and talk about old times before the kitchen was rebuilt and enlarged and the beautiful big gas stove put in. She often spoke of those long winter evenings of her youth, when the coal range filled the kitchen with a warm steady glow. She used to lie, drowsed with supper and comfort, in the corner behind the hot water boiler. Outside there was the frosty song of wind in the bare trees, and the glitter of winter stars. The hours went softly by. Sometimes there was the stir of coals in the grate, the tinkle of a falling cinder as the fire settled itself for the night—like a child turning over and dropping her doll out of bed as she falls asleep. The alarm clock went on steadily with its joggling count, trickery, trickery, trickery. Floors creaked overhead, the hot water rustled in the tall boiler. Fourchette lay so peaceful in

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 warm trance that the mouse Ferdinand came out of the pot-closet or an athletic roach emerged from the old sink and waved his feelers at her. She paid no attention. It is good for a cat—or for anyone else—to have long dreamy evenings like that in youth.

She lay so until, about midnight, Mr. Mistletoe would come through the kitchen, wearing his long gray dressing gown, to say good-night to the furnace. When she heard him go down the cellar stairs she got up and stretched, the graceful curving stretch of a handsome young cat. Donny always followed Mr. Mistletoe, pushing the swinging door open with his heavy body. Fourchette envied him being able to do that. She could not go through that door unless someone opened it for her. She had a trick of going through with Donny, slipping under his legs as he pushed the door, which always made him furious.

She and Donny would sniff at each other a little suspiciously, in the dark, until Mr. Mistletoe returned from the cellar. Then, as he moved to and fro getting out some supper for all three, they would both rub against his legs. Fourchette particularly was so clever at getting between his

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 feet that he often tripped in his long dressing gown and had to make absurd skips and capers to keep from falling. Fourchette was a very young cat in those days, and had not really learned that feet are dangerous.

But then came the exciting summer when the Gas actually arrived. Harry Smith and his carpenters and Mr. Penny and his plumbers came to remodel the kitchen. There was crashing and hammering and dust and confusion. The faithful coal range that had cooked so many good meals was taken in pieces and put out by the back steps. It stood there a long time, rusting in summer showers, until someone could be found to take it away. The old boiler that had heated the water for so many grimy children's baths was given to Mrs. Spaniel, the washerwoman, who needed a bigger boiler for washing so many clothes.

What a time it was! It seemed to Fourchette that the strong foundations of life itself were shaken. The stove, the boiler, the good old kitchen sink, were lying about by the back steps. Cockroaches were homeless. Perez, the Filipino cook, had need of all his good humour: he had to do his cooking on an oil stove on the kitchen

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 porch. Because of course the Gas was not ready to go in on the date appointed, and there were several days when the family lived chiefly on cold boiled ham. But at last the pipes were connected, and the new shining gas stove installed. When the burners were lit for the first time all the animals gathered by the back steps and gave a cheer. The workmen from the gas-office in Port Washington were much surprised.

Perhaps the most thrilling part of all this affair was the tearing-down of the old kitchen chimney. Mr. Mistletoe had long been worried about that chimney, which was very tall and slender and supported by iron braces bolted to the roof. It looked dangerous, some of the bricks were loose, and they were glad to have it removed. But what a mess when they began battering it down and bricks and mortar came tumbling into the garden. And, as if there weren't enough happening anyway, Mr. Mistletoe had chosen just that time to have a new sleeping porch built, and the back lawn was piled with lumber and boards of all sizes.

Not long before this upheaval Louise and Helen had suddenly decided to have gardens of their own. They dug up a patch of earth and

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 bought a packet of seeds. They bought zinnias, because the picture on the seed-packet looked so pretty, though not any prettier than the young gardeners themselves bending and raking and arranging a border of stones. But once dug and planted the gardens had been rather neglected, except by Donny who evidently thought them twin beds and slept in them by turns. Blythe, learning to ride a velocipede, used to trundle through them. In fact, few people realized that they were gardens at all; they simply thought them two more patches where the grass hadn't happened to grow. So, when the workmen were looking about for a convenient place to pile the bricks from the kitchen chimney, they dumped them all on top of the two gardens.

I don't think the gardeners worried much about this, for now so many interesting things were happening, and the zinnia seeds, still underground, said nothing. But presently Mr. Mistletoe, who had plans of his own for those bricks, hired Christopher and Buzzy to help him (at the rate of one cent for every twenty-five bricks) and they stacked them up neatly against the side of the garage.

Helen, by this time, had abandoned any

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 thoughts of raising flowers; but Louise, remembering the picture on the seed-packet, tidied up her patch once more. It looked a bit bruised, but she swept away the brick-dust and poured several cans of water on the earth to encourage the zinnias. Now the garden looked like a small accidental, and the workmen, wanting somewhere to pile all their lumber, thought that was the obvious place. Once more Louise's zinniabed was covered up, this time with masses of beams and boards, where the workmen sat cheerfully in the sunshine eating their lunch. Donny and Fourchette too lay about on the warm planks, with that enjoyment that all animals have in watching work going on.

So, in the general hullabaloo of tearing down and building up, Louise's garden was quite forgotten. But there was something obstinate about those zinnias. You'd have thought they were poison ivy, the way they hung on. For one day, in a chink among the litter of boards, what should stick up its head but a bright scarlet flower. Everyone was amazed. It didn't last long, though, for in shifting off the planks it got bashed.

Perhaps there was something queer about the

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 particular spot that Louise had chosen for a garden. Perhaps there was some special luck about it that attracted dogs and cats and velocipedes and workmen. But what happened now was most curious of all. Mr. Mistletoe and Perez had been cutting down trees in the back lot. One of these trees, tall and very straight, had been trimmed and stripped of its bark and sandpapered and varnished. One day, while Louise was away on a picnic, a deep hole was dug and the new shining pole was put up. Of course you can guess what happened. The place where the pole was set was the exact spot where the unsuccessful zinnia garden had been. When Louise came home that afternoon she forgot all about the bad luck she had had. For a surprising flower had shot up, bigger than any zinnia, brighter than any picture on a seed-packet. Tall and straight and clean, the stalk rose thirty feet into the air. At the top was the gayest and prettiest of flowers. Brilliant with colour, it floated gently in the breeze—the American flag.

Probably no one except Louise remembers the courageous little zinnia that once grew where the flagpole now is. But the old kitchen chimney

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 has its memorial too. Mr. Mistletoe took all its bricks and built them into a wall at the back of the croquet ground. He was not very skilful mixing mortar or laying bricks, and all the carpenters and everyone else who came to the house gave him all sorts of advice about doing it. They wanted him to use strings and plumb-lines and spirit-levels and get it nice and even. But his idea, which he was a little afraid to mention to more capable people, was that the wall, when finished, should look like a beautiful old ruin, an antique Long Island relic. Well, it does. It has only been there a year, but it looks a century old.

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Rh of their own language. The wretched schools they have in their towns and villages are so few, that on the average scarcely one man in a hundred will be found who can read a common letter. But the knowledge gained in these schools is so small that it does little more than serve to make darkness visible. Without books, without the vestige of a grammar in the common dialects, without the most limited vocabulary, what can they acquire even of their own language? They merely learn to trace the letters of the alphabet, to write a few names, and, as their highest accomplishment, to copy a meagre and ill-written letter. Hence when brought into life, numberless instances occur wherein their wretched writing and far more wretched orthography, almost the dictate of every man’s fancy render them quite unable to read each other’s hand. Hence too the perusal of books from which principles of integrity and uprightness might be imbibed, is quite out of the question. If there be any thing in, or in any other of their writers, which could preserve the tone of public morals, it is never brought within the reach of the common people. Printed books they have none, unless a copy of some book of the scriptures should have found its way among them. And as to manuscripts, they have scarcely one in prose; but if they possessed a multitude, their ignorance of their own language would render the perusal of an inaccurate and ill-written manuscript too formidable a task to be often attempted. Thus with a regular and copious language of their own, nearly all who are ignorant of the Sungskrit language, (which is not understood by one in ten thousand throughout India,) are in a state of ignorance not greatly exceeded by that of those savage hordes who have no written language, while numerous causes combine to sink them far below most savage nations in vice and immorality.

Add to this, that their knowledge of Arithmetic is scarcely less wretched. What avails their possessing treatises in Sungskrit both on Arithmetic and Geometry? from these the common people de-


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VEN when you get gas for cooking, that doesn't solve all problems. The gas stove hadn't been put in very long before there was the famous quarrel between the Pilot Light and the Big Burner. They were really rather fond of each other, and secretly each one admired the other's good qualities; but they quarrelled terribly!

You know what a Pilot Light is in a gas stove. It's a very small hidden flame that is kept going all the time for the purpose of lighting a Big Burner when that is needed. You push down a little valve, the Pilot Light shoots out a long streamer of bright flame. It is very interesting to watch. Turn on the gas in the Big Burner, then press the valve. The dainty streak of yellow fire darts from the Pilot like a magic wand: the Big

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 Burner seizes it and blossoms into a roaring blue flower.

You would have thought the Pilot Light would be rather proud of itself, pleased to have such fairylike work to do. Perhaps the trouble was that the other burners had teased it a little too much; perhaps, like many people with magic powers, it was temperamental. It had a fiery nature, which after all was not surprising. You know how in the old stories there is often a fairy who has a habit of imagining that she has been slighted or disregarded or offended in some way or other. It was like that with this clever but rather foolish Pilot Light. It was terribly jealous of the Big Burner. It complained bitterly of having to work all the time while the other burners were resting. It was even ashamed because its own flame was tiny and yellow while the Big Burner was so large and blue and powerful; it was annoyed that the Big Burner got all the fun and glory of cooking the food.

So the Pilot Light sulked in its little hole at the back of the stove. While the Big Burner, too busy to think about such differences, was blazing away, cooking soup or frying eggs or heating cocoa, the Pilot Light grumbled and whined and

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 was sorry for itself. It never stopped to think that though the Big Burner did a lot of loafing, also when it did work it worked furiously. The Pilot Light was so sensitive it imagined that everyone was making fun of it. When it heard all the pleasant sounds of cooking, it thought the others were mocking it. There was the bubble and hiss of water steaming in the big white kettle, the bump-bump of potatoes joggling in the boiler, the sharp snapping of frying bacon, the gentle simmer of vegetables stewing in pots, the deep rumbling crackle of the oven below them all. And these voices seemed to the angry Pilot Light to be saying: "You silly little drudge! Working all the time! Only useful to light up the Big Fellows and let them get all the fun and glory! Just a kind of office-boy! You're not much!"

One day the Pilot Light was so indignant that he simply went out, quit. The family had got so accustomed to depending on him that there were no matches at all in the kitchen. Mr. Mistletoe, who always had matches in his pocket, was away that day. No cooking could be done until they had gone next door and borrowed some matches from Mrs. Hopkins.

The Pilot Light was so peevish that he stayed

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96 outcome of the Presidential election at the time that you were making the calls was that they had been—that, in those States, President Biden had been determined to be the winner of the Presidential election?

Mr. I'm going to object to vagueness. I think the problem we're running into here is, determining the results of an election is somewhat complex, right? You have the media call, and we all know that occurs weeks before the formal governmental steps occur.

And so, when you say "outcome determined" or "called," there is absolutely no clarification of what you're meaning, whether you're meaning media's calling this or whether you're meaning that the formal legislative process has been completed.

So she has no guidance for how to determine if she had personal knowledge at the time of the call whether the media had called for that State or whether she had personal knowledge that the State had finished whatever formal process it could be. And I will note that the State's formal processes include multiple actors, like the secretary of state and the legislators and all of that.

And so at what point you're in that process has become the nebulous thing. Sol think I'm going to object to vagueness. I would suggest we really—if you want these questions answered, we really need to get specific.

Okay. How about—

The Let me—

Sorry. Go ahead.

The I just have something more to add on that. You know, I'm not a Rolodex of dates. I can't just recite to you when the secretary of state in a certain State said, you know, the election was certified or complete or something like that. I don't know.


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 out for several days. He made trouble, too, because when he was not burning there was a nasty little smell of gas in the kitchen at night, which gave Fourchette a headache. The gas-man came and fixed him so that he had to burn whether he wanted to or not. This made him grumble more than ever.

Then something happened that taught the Pilot Light a lesson.

One winter night there was great anxiety in the pot-closet. Ferdinand, the mouse, was grown—up now, and he and his wife Isabella had a family of baby mice. If you have ever seen very young baby mice you know how pretty and quick they are, and can understand that their parents think highly of them. And one of these young mice had got bronchitis. It had gone down into the cellar, which was forbidden, and had got its feet wet in one of those puddles that appear after a heavy rain, and now it was very ill. It was very ill indeed: it had a high fever, its soft fur was all rumpled, its poor little pointed nose was burning hot, its pink patty-paws were shivering cold, it had a pain in its chest and could hardly breathe. It was very patient and lay without complaining in the custard cup that Ferdinand

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 and Isabella used as a nursery, but its eyes were bright with fever and Ferdinand was very anxious. Suppose bronchitis should turn into pneumonia? It was chilly and draughty down in that corner of the pot-closet. There was only one thing to do: the sick mouse must have a hot compress on its chest immediately.

But how was anything to be heated, in the middle of the night? In this dreadful difficulty Ferdinand did what he would never have done except in case of necessity. He took a small drink of brandy from his flask, to encourage himself, then he put up a flag of truce and went boldly out into the kitchen to ask Fourchette's advice. He knew that Fourchette was a parent herself and would put aside old quarrels for the sake of a sick child.

Fourchette was certainly surprised to see Ferdinand (his whiskers trembling a little with nervousness) advance with a flag of truce. But she was always well-bred, and said politely but with a small touch of mischief, "It is a long time since I've seen you."

Ferdinand explained his anxiety, and at once Fourchette suggested the Pilot Light. Burning there quietly at the back of the stove while all

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 the house was asleep, it was just what they needed.

They had to call Donny, and Fourchette gave him the Flag of Truce call which means. This is an Emergency, All the Usual Rules Are Suspended, This call is four quick burrps: a burrp, as you know, is a sound in between a purr and a miow. Donny came hurrying and opened the swinging door so that Fourchette could go through. She—rushed upstairs and got camphorated oil from the medicine cupboard and a doll's saucepan from Helen's doll-house. She brought these to the kitchen. Donny allowed Ferdinand to jump on his tall back and from there onto the gas stove, which was all cool and comfortable except just in the little circle over the Pilot Light. There they heated the camphorated oil and carried it to the pot-closet. Ferdinand rubbed the baby mouse's chest with it, and Isabella fixed a little bandage.

All that night Ferdinand was busy, running between the pot-closet and the Pilot Light, heating camphorated oil. Fourchette bit off pieces of dish-cloths to be used as compresses. They mixed a little mustard with the oil, to make a kind of plaster. Ferdinand knew, from long

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 experience, where all the groceries were kept. The Pilot Light burned steadily and all went well. Towards morning the sick mouse showed a healthy perspiration and fell comfortably asleep. The fever was broken. They covered him over with a warm blanket of Corn Flakes and left him to rest.

The Pilot Light bragged about it next day. If it hadn't been for me, he said, that mouse would have died. This was quite true, and it gave the Pilot Light quite a new idea about his importance. He was no longer unhappy because he had to be ready for action at any time, day or night. He saw how silly it was to be jealous of the Big Burner because the latter is stronger and hotter and has a more showy job. And nowadays, when the Pilot shoots out his thin yellow glim, and the Big Burner catches it and leaps into a roaring circle of blue fire, each of them respects the other for his powers. "Thanks! Good kid!" says the Big Burner in his hoarse blustery voice. "Now watch me boil these potatoes. I'll make 'em bobble!" And the Pilot Light, as he flits back into his little socket, calls in a merry squeak "Go to it, Big Boy! I'll be here when you need me."

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Rh rive about as much advantage as though they were written in Chinese. Hence, though some of them, through long habit, are expert in calculation, as is the case with many in England unacquainted with a single rule of Arithmetic, at school they learn even the four fundamental rules in so wretched a manner, that an English boy of eight years old would, in a few minutes, resolve a question in multiplication or division, the solving of which would cost them an expense of time scarcely to be credited.


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 Mr. Mistletoe heard about all this later, and cheered the Pilot Light a great deal by something he said one evening while he and Pilot were getting ready to start the Big Burner on some midnight cocoa. "You see," he explained, "you're really just like an Editor running a magazine. He won't ever get as much praise as the people who write stories for his paper. He's all the time lighting up burners that are bigger than himself. But they know, and they don't forget, that they got the spark from him."

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OME of the best evenings the Grape Arbor ever had were when the Gissing Pond Quartette came up to sing. The frogs of Gissing Pond are famous singers: every year for I don't know how long they have won the championship—not only over the frogs from the other ponds in the Roslyn Estates, but in the big competition between the Village and the Heights. You know what rivalry there is between our two fire departments, the one in Roslyn and the one in the Heights, to see which can get to the fire sooner; and between our two post offices, to see which can sell more stamps. Well, it is just like that among the frogs. Every spring is the big Choir

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 Festival. From every pool in all our woodlands, from the smallest green swamp in the Estates as proudly as from the famous Mill Pond, frogs come hopping down to Cedarmere, the beautiful old place by the water where William Cullen Bryant lived. There, by kind permission of Mr. Godwin, they sit on the stone bridge across that picturesque lake and sing their competitions. Big snapping turtles crawl up on the bank to listen, herons and muskrats and wild ducks applaud from the reedy shore of the harbour.

The Gissing Pond Quartette always wins. (Mr. Godwin's white ducks are the judges.) When the Quartette whistles a light airy wheedling tune like Over the Hills and Far Away it is enchanting. When they troll the old Scotch ditty Roslyn Castle (from which Roslyn takes its name) the echoes repeat it all down the harbour as far as Bar Beach. Then they pitch their voices very low and sweet and break into Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes. Basso, the big bullfrog who sings the bottom notes, has a thrilling throaty rumble. To hear his deep bass sliding under the others, supporting and completing the harmony, brings tears to your eyes. When they finish that song there is the finest applause of all—perfect silence.

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 The Gissing Pond Quartette will always win as long as they have Basso. He might have beena very famous singer, for he was often urged to go into Grand Opera; but he preferred the quiet life of the Roslyn Estates. He is a plumber by trade, very clever at mending drains and fixing leaks or anything wet. He sings only to give his neighbours pleasure.

One evening when all the animals and children were in the arbor, and the Quartette had sung for them, Escargot asked Basso very politely if he wouldn't give them a few reminiscences. Basso is an old-timer, very large and stout. He is always pleased to be asked about Roslyn history.

"I don't suppose any of you," he said, "not even Bonny June who is the dean of the children in our neck of the woods, really remember Gissing Pond as it used to be in the old days. It didn't even have a name then, it was just a pond in the wilderness. Concealed in the hollow below the old ruin, behind big trees and the tangle of blackberry briars, few people knew it was there. I remember Mr. Mistletoe's excitement when he first discovered it. He had been brought up to believe that children should always have a tadpole pond handy: what luck to find one almost

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 at your front door! He used to come and sit on an old stump and smoke his pipe and wish the children would hurry up and grow big enough to hunt tadpoles. I was a tadpole myself at that time, and it rather worried me.

"When I consider that my family have lived here for so many generations—even before the Union Mortgage Company—it amuses me to think of Mr. Mistletoe feeling so proprietory about our pond. He always had a comic belief that he was a pioneer in these parts. He used to say, 1620 the Pilgrims settled in New England, 1920 the Mistletoes settled in the Roslyn Estates. But I have a kindly feeling toward him, because, though it is not generally known, I actually lived in his house for a while. He couldn't wait for the children to grow up to the age of tadpole-hunting so he went in wading and caught some himself. I was one of them. He put us in a milk bottle and took us home with him. He said it made him feel young again to have tadpoles in the dining room. I was afraid he meant he was going to eat us. But apparently he regarded us merely as a decoration: we were kept in a bowl in the dining-room window for some time. Then, when our legs began to grow, he took us back to the pond. That was

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 kind of him, and I have always been grateful. Therefore I am pleased to come up here with my friends and sing for you."

Basso cleared his throat and sat thinking in silent dignity. He is rather a pompous old fellow, and they have all learned that he likes to be treated with deference. They sat waiting respectfully for him to proceed.

"Yes," he continued, "you are all too young to remember those days properly. But it is a very good thing for children to have some one place rooted in their early memory: a place they know by heart and whose traditions will always be dear to them. Even for kittens it is a good thing to be respectful to their elders," he added sternly, noticing that Hops and Malta were a bit frolicsome.

Fourchette cuffed the kittens into order, and Basso went on.

"I recall my father telling me about the first night the Mistletoes ever spent in this house. One of the vans bringing the furniture broke down on the way, and the family had no beds to sleep on. Louise, who was only seventeen months old, slept in her baby carriage in the room which is now Mr. Mistletoe's den. Louise was a very

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 wriggly infant, and she had to be strapped in."

All the animals looked at Louise when her name was mentioned. Pleased and yet embarrassed to be singled out in this way she squirmed violently and looked wildly at the sky in a sudden fit of bashfulness.

"Where did I sleep?" cried both Helen and Blythe.

"You? Why neither of you were born or thought of," said Basso severely. "Helen might have been thought of, but certainly she hadn't been born."

"How about me?" asked Donny, who is now the senior dog of the Roslyn Estates and thinks himself rather important.

"You didn't exist either," said Basso. "Why even Gissing, the dog our pond was named for, wasn't born till that autumn."

"I don't believe the old frog was born himself," Donny grumbled irritably to Fritz in a hoarse whisper. "He's an old windbag."

"Mr. Mistletoe slept on the dining-room floor that night," Basso told them. "He left the light burning all night so that if the van arrived in the dark it could find the house. The frogs could see the light through the trees, and sang extra well,

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 that warm spring evening, to make a good impression on the newcomers. Mr. Mistletoe was astounded at the beauty of their voices. That's how he first knew there must be a pond near by. As soon as they got the furniture into the house, next day, he went out to explore. He discovered the pond, and what times they had. The first violets always grew there, and Christopher had to teach Louise to pick them with their stalks, not just to pull off their heads. There were picnics in the long grass, and turtles in the mud, and a huge old fallen willow tree where you could play house. I'll admit that for a while we didn't care much about this new invasion. My father put up a sign NO TRESPASSING, but that family never paid any attention to Private Property signs.

"It was a few months later that the dog Gissing appeared. The furnace man brought him up from the village in his pocket when he was just a tiny puppy. I never had any use for that dog myself. He was terribly excitable, and he was mad about the pond. Every day, on the slightest possible excuse, he was down by the water barking, snouting and snuffling about in the mud and bushes, plunging in to chase sticks that were thrown, churning to and fro in the water and

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 making a hideous clamour. Some of our oldest frog families couldn't stand it at all. There began to be nervous breakdowns among the tadpoles, and they moved away to new homes. I never approved of the pond being named for Gissing. He was a wild noisy fellow, and I can't understand how he became so famous. We were well rid of him."

"What became of him?" asked one of the younger animals.

"He snapped at some of the neighbours' children and he was taken to Bide-a-Wee," said Basso, and there was a thoughtful silence.

"It may not have been altogether his fault," the old frog added. "Mr. Mistletoe put him into a book, and it went to his head."

"Don't let's any of us get put into a book unless we write it ourselves," said Donny anxiously. "Then we can really tell the truth about things."

"Well, Gissing Pond went on in its quiet way," said Basso. "In winter they used it for skating, it was as good as having a private rink. There were snow-shovelling parties, and bonfires on the shore of the pond, and little star-patterns on the clear ice where the children had sat down

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 hard. Mr. Mistletoe used to bring an axe and chop up limbs of dead trees to take home for his fireplace. Dame Quickly, the old Dodge car, often drove right down to the edge of the pond so that he could load her with firewood. New houses were built not far away, but all the frogs got together and made such queer noises at night that people were afraid to come and live in them. We sang the Mortgage Song, which always alarms people when they hear it sung at midnight in a minor key. The magic of the place was strong, and it kept its perfect loneliness. But then one day an amazing thing happened. Perhaps we had sung the Mortgage Song too loud, and aroused some realtor's resentment. The pond disappeared."

"Disappeared?" exclaimed some of the animals, greatly shocked, while others, who knew about it, nodded their heads.

"Absolutely disappeared," repeated Basso solemnly. "We haven't quite got over the shock of it yet. Some workmen came one day, and dug a trench, and in a few hours the water all ran out. It drained down into that other pond, across the Mineola Road, and left only a big mudhole. When Mr. Mistletoe came down he was dreadfully upset, he walked about like a man in a daze.

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 He thought the pond was gone for good, and I saw him pick up a pebble from the mud to keep as a souvenir. He told me he was going to keep it with the pebble Captain Bone gave him that came from the middle of the Atlantic. He thinks there's something amusing in having those two pebbles side by side: one from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and one from the bottom of Gissing Pond.

"The frogs were badly startled too, I can tell you. Some hopped over to other ponds, but the rest of us stayed around to see what would happen. And I want to pay my respects to Bonny June and Buzzy, who came to the rescue in that distressing time."

Now it was Bonny June and Buzzy's turn to look embarrassed, and they did.

"Bonny June and Buzzy, like all the other children, had heard the sad news and went down to see. In the very middle of the mudhole they found a little puddle of water left, and in that puddle was a fish. All the other fish had escaped down the trench when the water drained off, but this one, a small perch I believe, had got caught. There he was, very puzzled and frightened, going miserably round his small tepid puddle. Bonny June left Buzzy to speak kindly to the perch

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 while she ran home and got a bucket. They filled it with clean water and put the perch in it and carried him carefully over to the Allens' pond. That was well done, and the Gissing Pond Alumni Association honoured them with a vote of thanks.

"But as you know, things weren't as bad as we feared. It seems that they were only draining the pond in order to clean it, and the real estate men hoped to get rid of that Mortgage Song that was alarming people. A lot of trees were cut down and the shores of the pond were trimmed, and a little grassy walk was planted all around it. I'm afraid they're going to make it civilized, very different from the old romantic spot. But anyhow the water all came back, and we hope for the best. And by the way, one of Mr. Hopkins's pigeons brought me a letter from the perch in Allen's pond. He says he is very homesick, and if Bonny June and Buzzy will come with the bucket he'd be glad to be taken back to his old home. He says he'll wait right by the stone steps at the edge of Allen's pond so they'll have no difficulty in finding him."

It was getting dark in the back lot, time for children to be in bed and frogs in pond. Basso and the other members of the Quartette went hopping

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 down the drive past the traffic lights of the fireflies. When they had crossed the meadow and got into the moist ground near home they paused for a final serenade. Their voices, Basso's deep boom strongest of all, were joined in close harmony. "Good Night, Ladies," they sang in rich tones, with all sorts of humorous trills and variations. The words, in a throaty frog accent, came floating up through the sparkling summer dusk. "We're going to leave you now. . . ." Then, if you had been listening very carefully, you could have heard four cool splashes as the singers dived gaily into the water of Gissing Pond.

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NE evening while Mr. Mistletoe was pulling up plantain-weeds. . ..

But before we go on I had better tell you a few details about Mr. Mistletoe's adventures as a grass-grower.

He was always happy when he was mowing the lawn—though lawn is certainly too smooth a word for such a bumpy arrangement of ground. There is something very soothing in the whirr of the twirling blades, if it is not broken too often by the hard shock of a stick or a pebble or one

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 of Donny's old bones. Keeping the lawnmower straight, and enjoying the smell of cut grass, and feeling your own strong earth solid under your feet, is a healthy pleasure.

But though Mr. Mistletoe was very happy mowing the grass, he looked serious. Perhaps he wag thinking? Certainly there was plenty to think about. I wonder what there was about his ground that made it so attractive to moles. Every time he thought he had got the front grass-plot in pretty good order, there appeared a new lot of their wrinkly little subways. Then these soft tunnels had to be all carefully trodden down or else flattened out with the heavy roller. Worst of all was when Donny and Fritz would decide to give some help in the mole problem. Then, when Mr. Mistletoe came back in the evening, he would find a ragged zigzag furrow, ten or fifteen feet long, dug up one of the terraces; or a hole big enough to bury a neighbour's child in. These excavations were worse to repair than all the tunnels a whole family of moles could make in a month.

Another thing Mr. Mistletoe used to think about, as he went solemnly to and fro with the lawnmower (stopping now and then to light his

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 pipe and wipe his forehead) was the idea of starting a Nassau County Weed Show. In a Flower Show he would have no chance at all; but in a well-conducted Weed Show he ought to get a prize. His plantain-weeds were remarkable, both in number and size. And in a good Weed Show there should also be prizes for the greatest number of croquet hoops lost in one season, or balls disappeared among rhododendron bushes, or velocipedes left out over night. In such competitions, he believed, the family would rank high.

But the plantain-weeds were his special concern. On warm evenings he often spent an hour or so grubbing them up. Sometimes it seemed as though the lawn was really more plantain than grass. But it is quite good fun pulling them up, because you are never sure whether the roots will come or not. If you are careful to get hold of all the leaves, and give a little twist, the chances are that the roots will come too. The game is to keep score, and count how many roots come and how many don't.

What bothered Mr. Mistletoe, in these adventures, was that anything so plentiful as those weeds should be so useless. For he liked to imagine that almost everything is useful in one way

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 or another if you understand about it. It always gave him great pain to throw anything away: he carefully preserved bits of string, heads of broken dolls, small pencils, buttons, corks, rusty nails. He rarely put these odds and ends to any purpose, but it made him happy to have saved them.

One evening, then, as I started to say at the beginning, Mr. Mistletoe was cheerfully pulling up plantain-weeds and putting them into a basket. When the basket was full he carried it into the woods and dumped it, and doing so he had to pass by the rabbit run. As he did so, he always said "Well, bunny bunny bunny," which was not an important thing to say but showed a friendly spirit. He and the rabbits led very different lives, and perhaps they did not really have very much in common, but at any rate they were on good terms. So he was shocked, passing their wire netting, to see that their eyes were full of tears.

They were white rabbits, with beautiful red eyes: Even in their cheerfullest moods there seems something a little wistful about eyes of that colour: they look as though they had been reddened by long and inconsolable weeping. So

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 when you take eyes that are naturally red, and fill them with real tears, the effect is very sad. Mr. Mistletoe was painfully startled and stopped by the netting to wonder.

If he had not been rather a stupid man he would have guessed long before. The rabbits had been trying all summer to tell him, but he could not understand their language. It was gradually breaking their hearts to see him, day after day, pulling up and throwing away the beautiful delicious plantain-weeds they love so much. Among the many things that Mr. Mistletoe did not know was the interesting fact that juicy green plantain is one of a rabbit's most favourite foods. And to remain helpless in their enclosure and watch all that plantain being wasted was more than they could bear.

When he stood there, holding the basket of weeds and wondering, the rabbits became greatly excited. Their ruby eyes glistened with trouble, their tall pink ears quivered, they stood up poking through the wire with noses that twitched.

"Good gracious," said Mr. Mistletoe. "They seem terribly upset about something. Can it be that they want some of the plantain? It might be very bad for them."

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 It seems queer that a man could be so ignorant. Do dogs like bones? Do horses like apples? Do Chinamen like rice? Do girls like fudge? That is how rabbits feel about plantain.

The behaviour of the rabbits was so emphatic, their eyes were so eloquently wet, that Mr. Mistletoe thought he might give them just one plantain and see what happened. When he began pushing it through the hole in the netting they almost tore it from his hands. They fell upon it like sailors on a glass of grog after a long, long voyage. There was a violent nibbling and crunching and in half a minute that green weed had entirely disappeared, even the little cluster of roots.

Mr. Mistletoe watched anxiously. He had a sort of idea that perhaps Binny and Bunny would suddenly fall dead. But they looked stronger and bigger than ever, their noses trembled with healthy vibrations, the tears had vanished from their eyes. They looked at him in a way he could not possibly misunderstand.

Good heavens, he said to himself, and gave them the whole basket.

Late that night Mr. Mistletoe was waked by

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97 So I just really don't feel like I can answer that question. Even if we, you know, decipher between media and official and all the steps within the official, I just—I don't think that I can fully answer that question.

 * BY

Okay. Let me try to put this in a different way. Let me rephrase—

Okay.

—one more time, and then we'll take a break.

The selection of States that we've been discussing that you were asked to make phone calls into to reach State legislators, by the time that you were making the calls, do you understand that the purpose of making the calls was to have something change about the outcome of the election?

I'm going to go back to what I said earlier, is, I was never aware of, you know, what the particular purpose of these calls were. You know, I wasn't looped in on any conversations related to strategy or, you know, as it says here, "the clear path." I was never looped in on these conversations. I can't comment on the purpose of the calls other than I made them because someone told me to and that was my job.

Okay.

Were any of the States that you were calling into States where you were asking State legislators to defend the outcome of the election at the time that it was there—at the time that you were making the calls, rather?

Can you clarify what you mean by "defend the outcome"?

Sure. So the sentence that we were just discussing a moment ago in the script refers to sending a slate of electors that will support President Trump. My, sort of, reading of that, understanding of that, is that you're asking the legislators to do something. Is that accurate?


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 a queer soft cheerful sound coming from the back yard. The rabbits were singing.

Slowly and quietly Mr. Mistletoe thought about this matter. He noticed, after that, that every time he began to pull up plantain-weeds the rabbits were watching him closely. Then a great idea came to him. He hunted about in the attic until he found the old baby-pen that had been used by the children long ago. He carried it outdoors and put it over the richest and thickest patch of plantain on the lawn. Then he put Binny and Bunny in the pen. There was a merry sound of crisp eating, and that was the end of that patch. As they ate, the rabbits' active paws patted down the earth smoothly and neatly so that all was left tidy. After an hour's time he shifted the pen to another place and they began afresh.

So that is how the great institution of Plantain Hour was started. Every summer evening the rabbits have their outing in the pen, and move round from one part of the garden to another. That is why Mr. Mistletoe's lawn is now so beautiful, and why the rabbits are the most buxom in the Roslyn Estates. Just look at them!

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text:
Author:Jean Katherine Baird

Works

 * Cash Three (1906)
 * Pandora's Box published in Baptist and Reflector (1907-01-24)
 * The Boy Next Door (1910)
 * The Heir of Barachah (1911)
 * The Light At Evening Time published in North Carolina Christian Advocate (1911-01-05)

title: Author:Jean Katherine Baird


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 And how about the mole-subways that Donny and Fritz dug open? Well, Mr. Mistletoe had learned a great secret. It is this, that grass will always grow excellently in places where it isn't wanted or expected. The stone gutters along his driveway, and the blue gravel of the drive itself, were thick with fine healthy clumps of grass. So he invented the trick of pulling up these little clumps and transplanting them into the ragged holes where the dogs had been at work.

A grass-plot could get the better of Mr. Mistletoe for a while, but it couldn't fool him permanently. In some ways he was quite an ingenious man.

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LYTHE came across the lawn, her hands hidden behind her. Eyes roguish, her small positive person swinging gaily, definitely, in time to the tune she was singing. "I know a secret—I won't tell; I know a secret—I won't tell," she chanted.

Yes, she knows a secret. What is it, I wonder? If we knew, you and I, it wouldn't be a secret.

Sometimes I think I have guessed a hint of it—that the age between four and five is the most beautiful of all. I meet her upstairs unexpectedly

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 in the middle of a hot summer night, trotting in her pyjamas. Perhaps she felt a sudden solitude, and planned an emigration into Mother's bed. (Do you know that sound of small bare feet on large bare floors, heard from below?) Or after breakfast when she climbs on a chair by the victrola, puts on a record, and dances to it with solemn grace. Quick, flitting in every movement, a dancing shape, an image gay. "She's always running," said observant Christopher. "She's an awfully quaint little thing."

She knows a secret. There are suggestions of it sometimes in the stories she tells. Riding in the car she feels an urge to narrate. She invents a myth or a long chantey of her own and recites it endlessly—if she can compel the others to silence; not always easy, for they too have epics they hanker to impart. She makes unexpected flashes of utterance, as when Dean Swift, loudly blowing her horn, went carefully round a dangerous corner. "I hear the Dean saying Excuse Me," said Blythe. That clear spring day at Lloyds Neck, when a cold April wind was crisping frills of white broken water along the beach. The whole shore was edged with a pure white band of foam. It was one of those crystal days of

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 earliest spring, too fair for steady thought. She looked at the shining fringe of breakers and heard their clean hiss on the pebbles. (She was only three.) "Snow," she said, "Snow saying, Sorrow to come in."

She knows a secret. Perhaps once we knew it too.

Darker occasions—when there are beans or spinach to be finished. The old family cry: Finach your spinach! Steadfast unshakeable passive resistance. "You make me sad! Do you want me to burst right open?" Very well, Blythe, no chocolate cake if you don't finish your vegetables. A slow steaming of tears in those dark eyes. (And gosh, what eyelashes!) Blythe, go and look at the doorknob, see if there isn't a smile there. There's a glass door-handle, just her height, on a door that has a mirror in it. According to legend a Special Smile lives on that doorknob. The trick is that when Blythe goes there to look for the smile on the knob, she sees herself in the tall mirror behind it. And in her grim unspinachable mood she looks so comic that she herself bursts into a grin. Well then, did you find it? She climbs again, smiling but business-like, into the high

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 chair. But the spinach is never finach. Ask the dining-room rug.

An idea for you: when you grow up and have children of your own, get a dining-room rug that is spinach-coloured.

The best stories are those Mother tells for Blythe's benefit, coming home in the car. After a long drive, perhaps out Farmingdale way to buy fresh vegetables from the stalls along the road, small passengers get restless and bickerish. I don't know why it is: Mr. Mistletoe has to brood and think a long while before he can tell a story, but Mother can spin a yarn right off the reel. The older children relish those stories too, with all the professional zest of literary critics, for they can appreciate how subtly the fable is adapted to Blythe's requirements, her mood and station in life. One of them is the story of Chickens in the Field. I have never heard it told, only heard it spoken of. As I say, it is Mother's story, and she is the one who can tell it properly.

One of the musics that Blythe makes up for herself, as the car hums along the road, is Chickens in the Field. "Chickens, chickens, in the field," she sings, many many times, to a tune of

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