CHAPTERS FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY .-- XV.
BY MARK TWAIN.
[_Dictated October 8, 1906._] _From Susy's Biography of Me._ Papa says that if the collera comes here he will take Sour Mash to the mountains.
[Sidenote: (1885.)] This remark about the cat is followed by various entries, covering a month, in which Jean, General Grant, the sculptor Gerhardt, Mrs.Candace Wheeler, Miss Dora Wheeler, Mr.Frank Stockton, Mrs.Mary Mapes Dodge, and the widow of General Custer appear and drift in procession across the page, then vanish forever from the Biography; then Susy drops this remark in the wake of the vanished procession: Sour Mash is a constant source of anxiety, care, and pleasure to papa.
I did, in truth, think a great deal of that old tortoise-shell harlot; but I haven't a doubt that in order to impress Susy I was pretending agonies of solicitude which I didn't honestly feel.

Sour Mash never gave me any real anxiety; she was always able to take care of herself, and she was ostentatiously vain of the fact; vain of it to a degree which often made me ashamed of her, much as I esteemed her.
Many persons would like to have the society of cats during the summer vacation in the country, but they deny themselves this pleasure because they think they must either take the cats along when they return to the city, where they would be a trouble and an encumbrance, or leave them in the country, houseless and homeless.

These people have no ingenuity, no invention, no wisdom; or it would occur to them to do as I do: rent cats by the month for the summer and return them to their good homes at the end of it.

Early last May I rented a kitten of a farmer's wife, by the month; then I got a discount by taking three.

They have been good company for about five months now, and are still kittens--at least they have not grown much, and to all intents and purposes are still kittens, and as full of romping energy and enthusiasm as they were in the beginning.