His friendship was rather constant than demonstrative.  When we returned from an absence of nearly two years, Calvin welcomed us with evident pleasure, but showed his satisfaction rather by tranquil happiness than by fuming about.  He had the faculty of making us glad to get home.  It was his constancy that was so attractive.  He liked companionship, but he wouldn’t be petted, or fussed over, or sit in any one’s lap a moment; he always extricated himself from such familiarity with dignity and with no show of temper.  If there was any petting to be done, however, he chose to do it.  Often he would sit looking at me, and then, moved by a delicate affection, come and pull at my coat and sleeve until he could touch my face with his nose, and then go away contented.  He had a habit of coming to my study in the morning, sitting quietly by my side or on the table for hours, watching the pen run over the paper, occasionally swinging his tail round for a blotter, and then going to sleep among the papers by the inkstand.  Or, more rarely, he would watch the writing from a perch on my shoulder.  Writing always interested him, and, until he understood it, he wanted to hold the pen.

He always held himself in a kind of reserve with his friend, as if he had said, “Let us respect our personality, and not make a ‘mess’ of friendship.”  He saw, with Emerson, the risk of degrading it to trivial conveniency.  “Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend?” “Leave this touching and clawing.”  Yet I would not give an unfair notion of his aloofness, his fine sense of the sacredness of the me and the not-me.  And, at the risk of not being believed, I will relate an incident, which was often repeated.  Calvin had the practice of passing a portion of the night in the contemplation of its beauties, and would come into our chamber over the roof of the conservatory through the open window, summer and winter, and go to sleep on the foot of my bed.  He would do this always exactly in this way; he never was content to stay in the chamber if we compelled him to go upstairs and through the door.  He had the obstinacy of General Grant.  But this is by the way.  In the morning, he performed his toilet and went down to breakfast with the rest of the family.  Now, when the mistress was absent from home, and at no other time, Calvin would come in the morning, when the bell rang, to the head of the bed, put up his feet and look into my face, follow me about when I rose, “assist” at the dressing, and in many purring ways show his fondness, as if he had plainly said, “I know that she has gone away, but I am here.”  Such was Calvin in rare moments.