ushion
by the fire, and never transgressing in one iota the proprieties
belonging to a cat of good breeding. She shared our affections with
her mistress, and we were allowed as a great favor and privilege,
now and then, to hold the favorite on our knees, and stroke her
satin coat to a smoother gloss.

"But it was not for cats alone that she had attractions. She was in
sympathy and fellowship with everything that moved and lived; knew
every bird and beast with a friendly acquaintanceship. The squirrels
that inhabited the trees in the front yard were won in time by her
blandishments to come and perch on her window-sills, and thence, by
trains of nuts adroitly laid, to disport themselves on the shining
cherry tea-table that stood between the windows; and we youngsters
used to sit entranced with delight as they gamboled and waved their
feathery tails in frolicsome security, eating rations of gingerbread
and bits of seedcake with as good a relish as any child among us.

"The habits, the rights, the wrongs, the wants, and the sufferings of
the animal creation formed the subject of many an interesting
conversation with her; and we boys, with the natural male instinct of
hunting, trapping, and pursuing, were often made to pause in our
career, remembering her pleas for the dumb things which could not
speak for themselves.

"Her little hermitage was the favorite resort of numerous friends.
Many of the young girls who attended the village academy made her
acquaintance, and nothing delighted her more than that they should
come there and read to her the books they were studying, when her
superior and wide information enabled her to light up and explain much
that was not clear to the immature students.

"In her shady retirement, too, she was a sort of Egeria to certain men
of genius, who came to read to her their writings, to consult her in
their arguments, and to discuss with her the literature and politics
of the day,--through all which her mind moved with an equal step, yet
with a sprightliness and vivacity peculiarly feminine.

"Her memory was remarkably retentive, not only of the contents of
books, but of all that great outlying fund of anecdote and story which
the quaint and earnest New England life always supplied. There were
pictures of peculiar characters, legends of true events stranger than
romance, all stored in the cabinets of her mind; and these came from
her lips with the greater force because the precision of he