You take my
advice, and bury him before he breeds a fever. I don't care how
many lives a cat has got; I only pay for one."
We gave Thomas Henry every chance to reform; but he only went from
bad to worse, and added poaching and chicken-stalking to his other
crimes, and I grew tired of paying for his vices.
I consulted the gardener, and the gardener said he had known cats
taken that way before.
"Do you know of any cure for it?" I asked.
"Well, sir," replied the gardener, "I have heard as how a dose of
brickbat and pond is a good thing in a general way."
"We'll try him with a dose just before bed time," I answered. The
gardener administered it, and we had no further trouble with him.
Poor Thomas Henry! It shows to one how a reputation for
respectability may lie in the mere absence of temptation. Born and
bred in the atmosphere of the Reform Club, what gentleman could go
wrong? I was sorry for Thomas Henry, and I have never believed in
the moral influence of the country since.
THE CITY OF THE SEA
They say, the chroniclers who have written the history of that low-
lying, wind-swept coast, that years ago the foam fringe of the
ocean lay further to the east; so that where now the North Sea
creeps among the treacherous sand-reefs, it was once dry land.
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