第36章

Pretending to reflect upon these things, but in reality watching the blue-jays, who are pecking at the purple berries of the woodbine on the south gable, I approach the house.Polly is picking up chestnuts on the sward, regardless of the high wind which rattles them about her head and upon the glass roof of her winter-garden.The garden, Isee, is filled with thrifty plants, which will make it always summer there.The callas about the fountain will be in flower by Christmas:

the plant appears to keep that holiday in her secret heart all summer.I close the outer windows as we go along, and congratulate myself that we are ready for winter.For the winter-garden I have no responsibility: Polly has entire charge of it.I am only required to keep it heated, and not too hot either; to smoke it often for the death of the bugs; to water it once a day; to move this and that into the sun and out of the sun pretty constantly: but she does all the work.We never relinquish that theory.

As we pass around the house, I discover a boy in the ravine filling a bag with chestnuts and hickorynuts.They are not plenty this year;and I suggest the propriety of leaving some for us.The boy is a little slow to take the idea: but he has apparently found the picking poor, and exhausted it; for, as he turns away down the glen, he hails me with,"Mister, I say, can you tell me where I can find some walnuts?"The coolness of this world grows upon me.It is time to go in and light a wood-fire on the hearth.

CALVIN

NOTE.--The following brief Memoir of one of the characters in this book is added by his friend, in the hope that the record of an exemplary fife in an humble sphere may be of some service to the world.

HARTFORD, January, 1880.

CALVIN

A STUDY OF CHARACTER

Calvin is dead.His life, long to him, but short for the rest of us, was not marked by startling adventures, but his character was so uncommon and his qualities were so worthy of imitation, that I have been asked by those who personally knew him to set down my recollections of his career.

His origin and ancestry were shrouded in mystery; even his age was a matter of pure conjecture.Although he was of the Maltese race, Ihave reason to suppose that he was American by birth as he certainly was in sympathy.Calvin was given to me eight years ago by Mrs.

Stowe, but she knew nothing of his age or origin.He walked into her house one day out of the great unknown and became at once at home, as if he had been always a friend of the family.He appeared to have artistic and literary tastes, and it was as if he had inquired at the door if that was the residence of the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"and, upon being assured that it was, bad decided to dwell there.

This is, of course, 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,--Isay 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.