all these fables certain philosophers could easily discover symbolic
significations of the highest morality. I have myself written a
treatise to prove that Puss in Boots is an allegory upon the progress of
the human understanding, having its origin in the mystical schools of
the Egyptian priests, and evidently an illustration of the worship
rendered at Thebes and Memphis to those feline quadrupeds of which they
make both religious symbols and elaborate mummies."

"My dear Austin," said my mother, opening her blue eyes, "you don't
think that Sisty will discover all those fine things in Puss in Boots!"

"My dear Kitty," answered my father, "you don't think, when you were
good enough to take up with me, that you found in me all the fine things
I have learned from books. You knew me only as a harmless creature who
was happy enough to please your fancy. By and by you discovered that I
was no worse for all the quartos that have transmigrated into ideas
within me,--ideas that are mysteries even to myself. If Sisty, as you
call the child (plague on that unlucky anachronism! which you do well to
abbreviate into a dissyllable),--if Sisty can't discover all the wisdom
of Egypt in Puss in Boots, what then? Puss in Boots is harmless, and it
pleases his fancy. All that wakes curiosity is wisdom, if innocent; all
that pleases the fancy now, turns hereafter to love or to knowledge.
And so, my dear, go back to the nursery."

But I should wrong thee, O best of fathers! if I suffered the reader to
suppose that because thou didst seem so indifferent to my birth, and so
careless as to my early teaching, therefore thou wert, at heart,
indifferent to thy troublesome Neogilos. As I grew older, I became more
sensibly aware that a father's eye was upon me. I distinctly remember
one incident, that seems to me, in looking back, a crisis in my infant