The hand blushing

“A curious little incident, illustrative of her extreme constitutional shyness, occurs to me at this moment. She had been persuaded one evening to play on the piano, and sing, which she did very sweetly to a small circle of very intimate friends; and as she rose to resume her gloves after her performance, an old gentleman with the rather demonstrative gallantry of his earlier day, took her hand saying “Ah do not put on that glove yet!” The hand, which was a particularly pretty, white, soft, dimpled hand, blushed to its taper finger-tips, as it was thus made an object of observation, and in spite of the kindly smile which the delicate little hand excited, I felt quite a painful sympathy with the confusion which overwhelmed its owner as she hastily drew it away and hid it in her glove”¹

From a paper entitled “Old womans gossip,” by Frances Anne Kemble in the Atlantic Monthly for April 1876, p. 453.

Incident occured at Edinburgh, to a young lady name not given nor date but probably about 1830.

W^m. H. Patterson.

Cats.

I have an old gray Tom cat which mews and purrs like other cats, but which has besides, another kind of speech which I have not noticed in others. It is a very short sound as nearly as possible like the sound that would be written MURR, and this seems to be in Cattish, “Thanks.”— It is only used however, so far as I know, when some member of the family opens the glass door in the porch and lets him in, he then says it when passing quickly along the hall, towards the kitchen.²

I happened to be in the town of Strabane, Co. Tyrone, 4 or 5 years ago and having an hour to spare walked along a poor suburb. The road was lined with cottages, and at the door of most of the cottages a cat sat, enjoying the evening sun. The curious thing was, that all the cats I noticed had the same colouring namely a mixture of light gray and white, and the fur was particularly long and coarse, I saw no cats with short glossy fur, nor any coloured, black, dark grey, or tortoiseshell, or even pure white. The particularly coarse coat struck me very much. This seems to have become the dominant type of cat in that quarter of Strabane.³

W^m. H. Patterson. | Dundela | Strandtown | Belfast.

April 24, | 1876,