animal point of view a certain resemblance to the imputed grimness and earnestness of the great reformer.  There was nothing in the least exaggerated in the account which Warner gave of the character and conduct of this really remarkable member of the feline race.  No biography was ever truer; no appreciation was ever more sympathetic; and in the long line of cats none was ever more worthy to have his story truly and sympathetically told.  All who had the fortune to see Calvin in the flesh will recognize the accuracy with which his portrait was drawn.  All who read the account of him, though not having seen him, will find it one of the most charming of descriptions.  It has the fullest right to be termed a cat classic.

With the publication of “My Summer in a Garden” Warner was launched upon a career of authorship which lasted without cessation during the thirty years that remained of his life.  It covered a wide field.  His interests were varied and his activity was unremitting.  Literature, art, and that vast diversity of topics which are loosely embraced under the general name of social science—­upon all these he had something fresh to say, and he said it invariably with attractiveness and effect.  It mattered little what he set out to talk about, the talk was sure to be full both of instruction and entertainment.  No sooner had the unequivocal success of his first published work brought his name before the public than he was besieged for contributions by conductors of periodicals of all sorts; and as he had ideas of his own upon all sorts of subjects, he was constantly furnishing matter of the most diverse kind for the most diverse audiences.

As a result, the volumes here gathered together represent but a limited portion of the work he accomplished.  All his life, indeed, Warner was not only an omnivorous consumer of the writings of others, but a constant producer.  The manifestation of it took place in ways frequently known to but few.  It was not merely the fact that as an editor of a daily paper he wrote regularly articles on topics of current interest to which he never expected to pay any further attention; but after his name became widely known and his services were in request everywhere, he produced scores of articles, some long, some short, some signed, some unsigned, of which he made no account whatever.  One looking through the pages of contemporary periodical literature is apt at any moment to light upon pieces, and sometimes upon series of them, which the author never took the trouble to collect.  Many of those to which his name was not attached can no longer be identified with any approach to certainty.  About the preservation of much that he did—­and some of it belonged distinctly to his best and most characteristic work—­he was singularly careless, or it may be better to say, singularly indifferent.