) "The landlord of the
premises was the owner of a block of twelve houses--six on Pearl
street, and six on Broadway, the lots meeting midway between the two
streets. On the rear of these lots are the out-houses, all under a
continuous flat roof, some twelve feet high, twenty wide, and say a
hundred and fifty feet long. In the rear of the Broadway
dwelling-houses, are one story tea-rooms, or third parlors, the roofs
of which form a continuous platform, upon which you can step from the
second story of the houses."
"Well," said the Doctor, "what of all that?"
"There's a great deal of it," Smith replied. "I don't pretend to know
how many cats there were in the city of Albany. Indeed, I never heard
that they were included in the census. I do not undertake to say that
they _all_ congregated nightly on the roofs of those out-houses. But
if there was a cat in the sixth ward, that didn't have something to
say on that roof every night, I should like to make its acquaintance.
I am against cats. I regard them as treacherous, ungrateful animals,
and as having very small moral developments generally. I am against
_cat-_terwauling, especially in the night season, when honest people
have a right to their natural sleep. I don't like to be woke up, when
rounding a pleasant dream, by their growling and screaming, spitting
and whining, groaning and crying, and the hundred other nameless
noises by which they frighten sleep from our pillows.
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