174 CALVIN: A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 



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, had 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 appear- 

 ance 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 



