If he can throw in a favorable word, too, touching the Leaplow cats and dogs--Lord bless you, sir! they would pardon treason!" "I begin to comprehend your policy, judge, if not your polity.

Leaplow being a popular government, it becomes necessary that its public agents should be popular too.

Now, as monikins naturally delight in their own excellences, nothing so disposes them to give credit to another, as his professions that he is worse than themselves." The judge nodded and grinned.
"But another word, dear sir--as you feel yourself constrained to commend the cats and dogs of Leaplow, do you belong to that school of philocats, who take their revenge for their amenity to the quadrupeds, by berating their fellow-creatures ?" The judge started, and glanced about him as if he dreaded a thief-taker.
Then earnestly imploring me to respect his situation, he added in a whisper, that the subject of the people was sacred with him, that he rarely spoke of them without a reverence, and that his favorable sentiments in relation to the cats and dogs were not dependent on any particular merits of the animals themselves, but merely because they were the people's cats and dogs.

Fearful that I might say something still more disagreeable, the judge hastened to take his leave, and I never saw him afterward.

I make no doubt, however, that in good time his hair grew as he grew again into favor, and that he found the means to exhibit the proper length of tail on all suitable occasions.
A crowd in the street now caught my attention.