One often hears: 'No standing pricks this weather,' or, 'It's a difficult thing to find it, etc., during a severe winter,' but one intensely cold morning, just as we were getting up, my wife looking out of the window, drew my attention to a poor cat which had been out all night, expressing her sympathy for the poor beast.

Presently I looked into the back yard for myself, when, lo! there were two cats, the feminine rolling on her back in the most approved fashion of cat-courtship, when the lady is agreeable to the gentleman's attentions. The thermometer at twenty-six degrees below freezing made no difficulty with him.

He was on to her and into her in a moment, the only difference being that he, and in fact both of them, were more ready than on a warm summer's night, when we all know to our cost, the long preliminary caterwauling, scratching, etc., necessary to bring Mr. Tom to the point.