第10章

He is a cat of fine disposition, the most irreproachable morals Iever saw thrown away in a cat, and a splendid hunter.He spends his nights, not in social dissipation, but in gathering in rats, mice, flying-squirrels, and also birds.When he first brought me a bird, Itold him that it was wrong, and tried to convince him, while he was eating it, that he was doing wrong; for he is a reasonable cat, and understands pretty much everything except the binomial theorem and the time down the cycloidal arc.But with no effect.The killing of birds went on, to my great regret and shame.

The other day I went to my garden to get a mess of peas.I had seen, the day before, that they were just ready to pick.How I had lined the ground, planted, hoed, bushed them! The bushes were very fine,--seven feet high, and of good wood.How I had delighted in the growing, the blowing, the podding! What a touching thought it was that they had all podded for me! When I went to pick them, I found the pods all split open, and the peas gone.The dear little birds, who are so fond of the strawberries, had eaten them all.Perhaps there were left as many as I planted: I did not count them.I made a rapid estimate of the cost of the seed, the interest of the ground, the price of labor, the value of the bushes, the anxiety of weeks of watchfulness.I looked about me on the face of Nature.The wind blew from the south so soft and treacherous! A thrush sang in the woods so deceitfully! All Nature seemed fair.But who was to give me back my peas? The fowls of the air have peas; but what has man?

I went into the house.I called Calvin.(That is the name of our cat, given him on account of his gravity, morality, and uprightness.

We never familiarly call him John).I petted Calvin.I lavished upon him an enthusiastic fondness.I told him that he had no fault;that the one action that I had called a vice was an heroic exhibition of regard for my interests.I bade him go and do likewise continually.I now saw how much better instinct is than mere unguided reason.Calvin knew.If he had put his opinion into English (instead of his native catalogue), it would have been: "You need not teach your grandmother to suck eggs." It was only the round of Nature.The worms eat a noxious something in the ground.The birds eat the worms.Calvin eats the birds.We eat--no, we do not eat Calvin.There the chain stops.When you ascend the scale of being, and come to an animal that is, like ourselves, inedible) you have arrived at a result where you can rest.Let us respect the cat.

He completes an edible chain.

I have little heart to discuss methods of raising peas.It occurs to me that I can have an iron peabush, a sort of trellis, through which I could discharge electricity at frequent intervals, and electrify the birds to death when they alight: for they stand upon my beautiful brush in order to pick out the peas.An apparatus of this kind, with an operator, would cost, however, about as much as the peas.Aneighbor suggests that I might put up a scarecrow near the vines, which would keep the birds away.I am doubtful about it: the birds are too much accustomed to seeing a person in poor clothes in the garden to care much for that.Another neighbor suggests that the birds do not open the pods; that a sort of blast, apt to come after rain, splits the pods, and the birds then eat the peas.It may be so.There seems to be complete unity of action between the blast and the birds.But, good neighbors, kind friends, I desire that you will not increase, by talk, a disappointment which you cannot assuage.