With the coming of September a laugh floated down from the remote Tyringham Valley in Massachusetts where have resided — of summers — two elderly spinster sisters whose principal interest centers in their cat. Last fall these estimable ladies sought a doctor friend, head of an important sanitarium there, to explain that they were leaving for New York and were taking their cat with them, but that they simply couldn't bear to think of his being cooped up for four hours in a small basket. It was too cruel.

"Teddy is very lively anyhow, Doctor, and we wondered if you if you could not give us something to put him to sleep on the trip." The doctor obligingly guessed that he could and administered a small dose of morphine just before the train started. Then he forgot all about it. During the following winter, however, a neighbor sought the doctor with a stray cat she had found and the earnest request that the doctor put it out of its misery. The doctor administered morphine to this cat too, but to his surprise the cat had no sooner felt the morphine in its veins than it began shrieking and spitting at the doctor. It climbed up a window curtain and tore it, jumped upon the mantel, knocking over two vases, leaped out of the window and spent the next two hours scooting through the village.

Mystified and perturbed, the physician discussed the phenomenon with his associates, but there was no explanation until spring, when a junior assistant chanced to be reading up on drugs. He came to a passage which caused his eyes to bulge. Although the effect of morphine is thus and so, the medical book said, "when administered to members of the feline family it oddly has exactly the opposite effect."

"Ye gods," said the doctor. "And I gave it to Teddy."

When the two elderly ladies returned to Tyringham Valley this summer the doctor evaded them, but last week they finally cornered him, quaking, in the post office. "Oh, doctor!" they exclaimed. "We've been looking for you all summer. We can't thank you enough for giving Teddy that dose last year. Why, as it *was*," said they, "as it *was*, you never saw anything like it. He got excited as soon as the train started, broke out of the basket, rushed through the car for an hour like a mad thing, scared everybody and bit the conductor on the hand."