LORDS
OF THE HOUSETOPS
THIRTEEN CAT TALES
BOOKS BY
CARL VAN VECHTEN
INTERPRETERS
IN THE GARRET
THE MUSIC OF SPAIN
THE MERRY-GO-ROUND
MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS
THE TIGER IN THE HOUSE
LORDS OF THE HOUSETOPS
MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR
WITH A PREFACE BY
CARL VAN VECHTEN
C'est l'esprit familier du lieu;
Il juge, il préside, il inspire
Toutes choses dans son empire;
Peut-être est-il fée, est-il dieu.
Charles Baudelaire.
NEW YORK ALFRED · A · KNOPF MCMXXI
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
These stories I have collected to amuse
Avery Hopwood
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks are due to the following authors and publishers for permission touse the stories contained in this book:
Harper and Brothers and Mrs. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman for The Cat, fromUnderstudies (copyright 1901 by Harper and Brothers).
Houghton Mifflin Co., for Zut, from Zut and Other Parisians(copyright 1903 by Guy Wetmore Carryl).
E. P. Dutton and Co., for A Psychical Invasion, from John Silence.
Doubleday, Page and Co., and Booth Tarkington for Gipsy, from Penrodand Sam (copyright 1916 by Doubleday, Page and Co.).
Harper and Brothers and the Mark Twain Estate for Dick Baker's Cat,from Roughing It (copyright 1871-1899 by the American Publishing Co.;copyright 1899 by Samuel L. Clemens; copyright 1913 by ClaraGabrilowitsch).
Harper and Brothers for Madame Jolicœur's Cat, from From the Southof France (copyright 1912 by Harper and Brothers).
George H. Doran Co., for A Friendly Rat, from The Book of aNaturalist (copyright 1919 by the George H. Doran Co.).
The Four Seas Co., and Peggy Bacon for The Queen's Cat, from TheTrue Philosopher (copyright 1919 by the Four Seas Co.).
Houghton Mifflin Co., for Calvin, from My Summer in a Garden(copyright 1870 by Fields, Osgood and Co.; copyright 1898 by CharlesDudley Warner; copyright 1912 by Susan Lee Warner).
PREFACE
In the essay and especially in poetry the cat has become a favouritesubject, but in fiction it must be admitted that he lags considerablybehind the dog. The reasons for this apparently arbitrary preference onthe part of authors are perfectly easy to explain. The instinctive actsof the dog, who is a company-loving brute, are very human; hispsychology on occasion is almost human. He often behaves as a man wouldbehave. It is therefore a comparatively simple matter to insert a doginto a story about men, for he can often carry it along after thefashion of a human character.
But, as Andrew Lang has so well observed, literature can never take athing simply for what it is worth. "The plain-dealing dog must bedistinctly bored by the ever-growing obligation to live up to theanecdotes of him.... These anecdotes are not told for his sake; they aretold to save the self-respect of people who want an idol, and who aredisto