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For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.

Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence.

Yet, mad am I not-and very surely do I not dream.

But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul.

My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events.

In their consequences, these events have terrified-have tortured-have destroyed me.

Yet I will not attempt to expound them.

To me, they have presented little but horror-to many they will seem less terrible than baroques.

Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the commonplace-some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.

From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition.

My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions.

I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets.

With these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them.

This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and, in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure.

To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable.

There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.

I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.

This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree.

In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise.

Not that she was ever serious upon this point-and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered.

Pluto-this was the cat's name-was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets.

Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and character-through the instrumentality of the fiend Intemperance-had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse.

I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others.

I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife.

The Black Cat

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