As the promoter of immediate, even though transitory, happiness in a family, few things can be named that are more effective than the simple introduction into it of a playful kitten. Even where morals and religion fail outright, this always proves a glorious success. Tea time is over, for example. The husband is sitting, tired with his day's work and silent, the wife equally wearied with hers, and the children begin to feel the situation decidedly oppressive. Presently, after a portentously long-drawn sigh, six-year-old little Ellen is suddenly struck with a bright idea, and vanishes out of the room. A moment later and she is heard on the return dangling something after her. It turns out to be a string, with a spool at the end of it, in whose wake, crouching, springing, all grace, life, and elasticity, is pussy. Irresistibly does the dancing motion in the bobbing spool set on dancing motion in the nerves and consciousness of the kitten. Equally irresistibly do the quick pulses of the glee and electric life in her propagate kindred vibrations through the frames of the now suddenly animated family. The father begins to smile, the mother ripples all over, the children fairly dance with delight; and, ten to one, before many minutes are by, the late tired and perhaps morose lord of the mansion jumps up and insists on taking the string into his own hand and becoming an actor in the merry comedy.

      Behold how great a fire a little kitty kindleth! How profound and effective a philosopher this miniature Ellen. What intellectual and practical grasp of the springs of human emotion and the way of getting at them. If preachers and orators, with their larger range, understood the matter a tithe as well, the world in a trice would be peopled with patriots and saints. But this is precisely what the majority of them never learn to understand. They study the laws of stimulating life in books so stupid that they fairly fall asleep over them themselves. What one of them that ever had wit enough to insist on little Ellen being inaugurated professor of homiletics in a divinity school. And yet, right before their eyes has she illustrated a principle of simply illimitable bearing, alike on forensic oratory or pulpit eloquence. Here is her philosophical thesis: "Motion sets on motion; electric life, electric life." First, the jump and dance in the spool, then the jump and dance in kitty, then the jump and dance in father and mother. One follows the other as inevitably as do first the breeze across the lake, then the responsive wavelets on the surface, then the vibrating grasses along the shore.

      Fishing and hunting constitute one of the few subjects on which grown-up people manifest any real grasp of philosophical principles. An incurable dullard must be among them who thinks long to enliven himself with a logy club or soggy catfish. No! with clear, rational intent, man betakes himself to the lively trout or leaping salmon, and then all along the electric line and vibrating fly-rod streams the magnetic life. Or, if a hunter, it is the flying fox and not the lumbering turtle he mounts his horse and spurs after. Now, even the first beginnings even of intelligent conduct are to be recognized and praised, for in them are given fundamental principles to be carried over into wider spheres. Trout, salmon, and foxes are but cunning symbols in which nature hides universal lessons. Like Æsop, she talks animals, but means men. How to triumph over dulness, stupidity, dumps in the family, school, church, this is what she is really emphasizing. And therefore does she constitute little Ellen her true professor, and say, "Except ye become as this little child, ye cannot enter into the Kingdom."

      It cannot be denied that a great deal of the family life of the land is oppressively heavy and stupid. What evenings of silence, monotony and moroseness are labored through with, and that, too, by husbands, wives, sons, and daughters with large capacities of happy life in them, could these capacities once be stirred! Alas! the kitten is not brought in. But there she is all the while, sleeping in the strings of the silent piano or snuggled away in the bookcase, say, as an Uncle Remus story. Bring her out in this latter shape, for instance, and read aloud "The Tar Baby." In a trice has the rollicking negro life imparted itself to the whole group, and the late sluggish pool is a breeze-stirred, rippling, laughing sheet of water. When will man learn to prize and utilize the endless range of like stimulants he has around him, as practically as the toper the variously labelled decanters on the shelves of the bar-room? There is no getting along without a nipper of some sort, now and then, to warm and cheer a body up. The system becomes dull and heavy, and must have an external fillip. The piano will do it, the fiddle will do it, the humorous or eloquent book will do it. But one or the other of these must be brought into play. Surely, the greatest need of the hour is that of inspiring wives with a lively sense of responsibility for having such stupid husbands, and husbands for having such stupid wives. There is no sort of necessity of it, if they will but master and apply the simple philosophy of the kitten.