his lawn.  He disliked cats, evidently regarding them as feline and treacherous, and he had no association with them.  Occasionally there would be heard a night concert in the shrubbery.  Calvin would ask to have the door opened, and then you would hear a rush and a “pestzt,” and the concert would explode, and Calvin would quietly come in and resume his seat on the hearth.  There was no trace of anger in his manner, but he would n’t have any of that about the house.  He had the rare virtue of magnanimity.  Although he had fixed notions about his own rights, and extraordinary persistency in getting them, he never showed temper at a repulse; he simply and firmly persisted till he had what he wanted.  His diet was one point; his idea was that of the scholars about dictionaries,—­to “get the best.”  He knew as well as any one what was in the house, and would refuse beef if turkey was to be had; and if there were oysters, he would wait over the turkey to see if the oysters would not be forthcoming.  And yet he was not a gross gourmand; he would eat bread if he saw me eating it, and thought he was not being imposed on.  His habits of feeding, also, were refined; he never used a knife, and he would put up his hand and draw the fork down to his mouth as gracefully as a grown person.  Unless necessity compelled, he would not eat in the kitchen, but insisted upon his meals in the dining-room, and would wait patiently, unless a stranger were present; and then he was sure to importune the visitor, hoping that the latter was ignorant of the rule of the house, and would give him something.  They used to say that he preferred as his table-cloth on the floor a certain well-known church journal; but this was said by an Episcopalian.  So far as I know, he had no religious prejudices, except that he did not like the association with Romanists.  He tolerated the servants, because they belonged to the house, and would sometimes linger by the kitchen stove; but the moment visitors came in he arose, opened the door, and marched into the drawing-room.  Yet he enjoyed the company of his equals, and never withdrew, no matter how many callers—­whom he recognized as of his society—­might come into the drawing-room.  Calvin was fond of company, but he wanted to choose it; and I have no doubt that his was an aristocratic fastidiousness rather than one of faith.  It is so with most people.

The intelligence of Calvin was something phenomenal, in his rank of life.  He established a method of communicating his wants, and even some of his sentiments; and he could help himself in many things.  There was a furnace register in a retired room, where he used to go when he wished to be alone, that he always opened when he desired more heat; but he never shut it, any more than he shut the door after himself.  He could do almost everything but speak; and you would declare sometimes that you could see a pathetic longing to do that in his intelligent face.  I have no desire to overdraw his qualities, but if there was