University of Virginia Library

I'll tell you a tale of a watery disaster,
Of a cat and a kitten, and their little master;
A tale it shall be, neither made up nor silly,
Of two good little children, named Peggy and Willy.
They were not rich children and clever, like you,
Who have books, toys, and pictures, and nothing to do;
They were two little orphans, that lived on a common,
In a very small house, with a very old woman.
A very old woman, as poor as could be;
And they worked for the bread that they ate, all three.
The old woman was feeble, rheumatic, and thin,
And with very great labour she managed to spin;
And all the day long, with unwearying zeal,
From Monday to Saturday round went her wheel;
Yet, with all her turning, she scarce could contrive
To earn the small pittance that kept her alive;
So these good little children they both did their best,
And gave from their earnings what made up the rest.

Of wealth, which so many consider a blessing,
The three nothing knew—yet the joy of possessing,
Even in this poor cottage the inmates could share,
For the dame had her wheel, and her table and chair;
But Peggy and Willy than these had far more,
For hers was the black-bird that hung at the door,
The sweet-singing black-bird, that filled with delight
Of its music, the cottage from morning to night;
And his was the cat that slept under his bed,
And never looked famished howe'er it was fed.

Now, the tale that I had in my mind to rehearse
Was related by Willy, though not told in verse:
Said Willy, “The cat had a kitten that lay
Behind my bed's head, on a cushion of hay;
A beautiful kit, though a mischievous elf,
And given to prowling about by itself.
Now it happened, one day, as I came from my work,
Before I had put by my rake and my fork,
The old cat came up, and she pawed and she mewed,
With the wofulest visage that ever I viewed,
And she shewed me the door, and she ran in and out;
I couldn't conceive what the cat was about!
At length, I bethought that the creature was good,
And she should have her way, let it be what it would;
And no sooner she saw me inclined to obey,
Than she set up her tail, and she scampered away
To a pond not far off, where the kitten I found
In a bottomless basket, just sinking, half drowned.
However it got there I never could tell,
For a cat hates the water—but so it befell.
Perhaps some bad boy this action had done,
To torture the kitten, and then call it fun;
Yet that I don't know; but I soon got her out,
And a terrible fright she had had, there's no doubt;
'Twas a pitiful object, it drooped down its head,
And Peggy for some time declared it was dead.
But its heart was alive, spite the panic and pain,
And it opened its eyes and looked up again;
And we gave it some milk, and we dried its wet fur,
And oh! what a pleasure there was in its purr!
At length, when we saw that all danger was over,
And that well warmed and dried, it began to recover,
We laid it in bed, on its cushion of hay,
And wrapped it up snugly and bade it ‘good-day.’
And then its poor mother gave over her mourning,
And lay down and purred like the wheel that was turning;
And she and the kitten by care unperplexed,
Slept, purred, and scarce stirred all that day and the next;
Then scarcely a trace of her trouble she bore,
Though meeker and graver than ever before.”
So here ends my tale of this watery disaster,
Of the cat and the kitten, and their little master.