Catnip

or Catmint, a mint-like plant. It is an immigrant from Europe, now quite at home in rich, shady spots around farm buildings and under pasture fences. It has a square stem, soft, hairy, heart-shaped leaves, and a white, deeply two-lipped flower, dotted with purple. Catnip tea is a standard remedy for a cold or colic. A bunch of catnip keeps company with boneset in all old-fashioned attics worth the name. A closely related creeping plant is often called ground ivy. See Medicine

Cato (234-149 B. C.), a Roman statesman, surnamed "the Censor" and "the Wise." He served with Fabius during the invasion by Hannibal. He held a number of public positions. He was praetor in command of Sardinia, served as consul, and did his best to keep a law on the statute books requiring women to dress in plain colors and to wear little or no jewelry. By such an attitude, and by inflexible honesty, he became popular with the people and was made censor, an office designed to amend whatever seemed to be going wrong. Some one asked him why a statue had not been erected in his honor. Cato replied, "I would rather have it asked why no image has been erected to Cato than have it asked why one had been set up." After the Second Punic War Cato was sent on an embassy to Carthage, and returned so astonished by its rapid recovery and its wealth, that he sought every opportunity to admonish the Roman senate of the danger of allowing so powerful a city to remain, ending every speech with the words now become proverbial, "Carthage must be destroyed." See Scipio; Carthage

Cato the Younger (95-46 B. C.), a Roman general and statesman. He was a great-grandson of Cato the Censor. Like his great ancestor he was a man of strict integrity, popular with the people. Among philosophers he is known as a Stoic. He served in military operations against the Spartans and in Macedonia. In the troublous days of the Catilinian conspiracy he supported Cicero. He opposed the plans of Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar. To get rid of him they sent him to govern Cyprus. He distinguished himself by turning an immense sum of money into the public treasury instead of stealing it. When Crassus and Pompey came to blows he took sides against Caesar, and, after his defeat at Munda, retired to the little city of Utica, near Carthage, where he fell on his sword rather than be reconciled to Caesar. Caesar is said to have exclaimed: "I grudge thee thy death, since thou hast grudged me the honor of sparing thy life." The residence of so great a man in so obscure a place gave point to the expression, "No pent-up Utica contracts your powers." Addison's tragedy of Cato is founded on the life of this Roman.