dmother. It bored me very
much to come. But she was said to be near death, and death leaves great
houses vacant for others to fill. So when my mother said that I had
better come, and my father added that he thought my grandmother was
fonder of me than of my other relations, I gave up all my boyish plans
for the holidays with apparent willingness. Though almost a child, I was
not short-sighted. I knew every boy had a future as well as a present. I
gave up my plans, and came here with a smile; but in my heart I hated my
grandmother for having power, and so bending me to relinquish pleasure
for boredom. I hated her, and I came to her and kissed her, and saw her
beautiful white Persian cat sitting before the fire in this room, and
thought of the fellow who was my bosom friend, and with whom I longed
to be, shooting, or fishing, or riding. And I looked at the cat again.
I remember it began to purr when I went near to it. It sat quite still,
with its blue eyes fixed upon the fire, but when I approached it I
heard it purr complacently. I longed to kick it. The limitations of its
ridiculous life satisfied it completely. It seemed to reproduce in an
absurd, diminished way my grandmother in her white lace cap, with her
white face and hands. She sat in her chair all day and looked at the
fire. The cat sat on the hearthrug and did the same. The cat seemed to
me the animal personification of the human being who kept me chained
from all the sports and pleasures I had promised myself for the
holidays. When I went near to the cat, and heard it calmly purring at
me, I longed to do it an injury. It seemed to me as if it understood
what my grandmother did not, and was complacently triumphing at my
voluntary imprisonment with age, and laughing to itself at the pains
men--and boys--will undergo for the sake of money. Brute! I did not love
my grandmother, and she had money. I hated the cat utterly. It hadn't a
_sou!_

This beautiful house is not old. My grandfather built it himself. He had
no love for the life of towns, I believe, but was passionately in touch
with nature, and, when a young man, he set out on a strange tour through
England. His object was to find a perfect view, and in front of that
view he intended to build himself a habitation. For nearly a year, so I
have been told, he wandered through Scotland and England, and at last
he came to this place in Cumberland, to this village, to this very spot.
Here his wanderings ceased. Sta