Chipperley's nerves."
In her beautiful, old-fashioned home at Newburyport, Mass., she has two
beloved cats. But I will not attempt to improve on her own account of
them:--
"As for my own cats,--their name has been legion, although a few remain
preeminent. There was Miss Spot who came to us already named, preferring
our domicile to the neighboring one she had. Her only son was so black
that he was known as Ink Spot, but her only daughter was so altogether
ideal and black, too, that she was known as Beauty Spot. Beauty Spot led
a sorrowful life, and was fortunately born clothed in black or her
mourning would have been expensive, as she was always in a bereaved
condition, her drowned offspring making a shoal in the Merrimac,
although she had always plenty left. She solaced herself with music. She
would never sit in any one's lap but mine, and in mine only when I sang;
and then only when I sang 'The Last Rose of Summer.' This is really
true. But she would spring into my husband's lap if he whistled. She
would leave her sleep reluctantly, start a little way, and retreat,
start and retreat again, and then give one bound and light on his knee
or his arm and reach up one paw and push it repeatedly across his mouth
like one playing the jew's-harp; I suppose to get at the sound. She
always went to walk with us and followed us wherever we went about the
island.
"Lucifer and Phosphor have been our cats for the last ten years:
Lucifer, entirely black, Phosphor, as yellow as saffron, a real golden
fleece.
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