fanciful, for his antecedents were wholly unknown, but in his time he could hardly have been in any household where he would not have heard “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” talked about.  When he came to Mrs. Stowe, he was as large as he ever was, and apparently as old as he ever became.  Yet there was in him no appearance of age; he was in the happy maturity of all his powers, and you would rather have said that in that maturity he had found the secret of perpetual youth.  And it was as difficult to believe that he would ever be aged as it was to imagine that he had ever been in immature youth.  There was in him a mysterious perpetuity.

After some years, when Mrs. Stowe made her winter home in Florida, Calvin came to live with us.  From the first moment, he fell into the ways of the house and assumed a recognized position in the family,—­I say recognized, because after he became known he was always inquired for by visitors, and in the letters to the other members of the family he always received a message.  Although the least obtrusive of beings, his individuality always made itself felt.

His personal appearance had much to do with this, for he was of royal mould, and had an air of high breeding.  He was large, but he had nothing of the fat grossness of the celebrated Angora family; though powerful, he was exquisitely proportioned, and as graceful in every movement as a young leopard.  When he stood up to open a door—­he opened all the doors with old-fashioned latches—­he was portentously tall, and when stretched on the rug before the fire he seemed too long for this world—­as indeed he was.  His coat was the finest and softest I have ever seen, a shade of quiet Maltese; and from his throat downward, underneath, to the white tips of his feet, he wore the whitest and most delicate ermine; and no person was ever more fastidiously neat.  In his finely formed head you saw something of his aristocratic character; the ears were small and cleanly cut, there was a tinge of pink in the nostrils, his face was handsome, and the expression of his countenance exceedingly intelligent—­I should call it even a sweet expression, if the term were not inconsistent with his look of alertness and sagacity.

It is difficult to convey a just idea of his gayety in connection with his dignity and gravity, which his name expressed.  As we know nothing of his family, of course it will be understood that Calvin was his Christian name.  He had times of relaxation into utter playfulness, delighting in a ball of yarn, catching sportively at stray ribbons when his mistress was at her toilet, and pursuing his own tail, with hilarity, for lack of anything better.  He could amuse himself by the hour, and he did not care for children; perhaps something in his past was present to his memory.  He had absolutely no bad habits, and his disposition was perfect.  I never saw him exactly angry, though I have seen his tail grow to an enormous size when a strange cat appeared upon