To the Same

Olney, August 3, 1782.  It is a sort of paradox, but it is true; we are never more in danger than when we think ourselves most secure, nor in reality more secure than when we seem to be most in danger.  Both sides of this apparent contradiction were lately verified in my experience.  Passing from the greenhouse to the barn, I saw three kittens—­for we have so many in our retinue—­looking with fixed attention on something which lay on the threshold of a door nailed up.  I took but little notice of them at first, but a loud hiss engaged me to attend more closely, when behold—­a viper! the largest that I remember to have seen, rearing itself, darting its forked tongue, and ejaculating the aforesaid hiss at the nose of a kitten, almost in contact with his lips.  I ran into the hall for a hoe with a long handle, with which I intended to assail him, and, returning in a few minutes, missed him; he was gone, and I feared had escaped me.  Still, however, the kitten sat, watching immovably, on the same spot.  I concluded, therefore, that, sliding between the door and the threshold, he had found his way out of the garden into the yard.

I went round, and there found him in close conversation with the old cat, whose curiosity, being excited by so novel an appearance, inclined her to pat his head repeatedly with her fore foot, with her claws, however, sheathed, and not in anger, but in the way of philosophic inquiry and examination.  To prevent her falling a victim to so laudable an exercise of her talents, I interposed in a moment with the hoe, and performed on him an act of decapitation which, though not immediately mortal, proved so in the end.

Had he slid into the passages, where it is dark, or had he indeed, when in the yard, met with no interruption from the cat, and secreted himself in any of the out-houses, it is hardly possible but that some member of the family must have been bitten.

To the Same

Olney, November 4, 1782.  You tell me that John Gilpin made you laugh to tears, and that the ladies at court are delighted with my poems.  Much good may they do them!  May they become as wise as the writer wished them, and they will be much happier than he.  I know there is in the book that wisdom that cometh from above, because it was from above that I received it.  May they receive it too!  For whether they drink it out of the cistern, or whether it falls upon them immediately from the clouds—­as it did on me—­is all one.  It is the water of life, which whosoever shall drink it shall thirst no more.  As to the famous horseman above mentioned, he and his feats are an inexhaustible source of merriment.  At least we find him so, and seldom meet without refreshing ourselves with the recollection of them.  You are at liberty to deal with them as you please.

To Mrs. Newton

Olney, November 23, 1782.  Accept my thanks for the trouble you take in vending my poems, and still more for the interest you take in their success.  To be approved by the great, as Horace observed many years ago, is fame indeed.