Page:Appreciations of Horace Howard Furness.djvu/39

 Rh hours out of the twenty-four and, under pressure, thought little of adding a few hours more. For twenty years he lived in his country-seat at Wallingford, remote from the importunities of the town. Here in the uninvaded seclusion of his noble library he sat, resolute and absorbed, while the long quiet days merged into the quiet nights.

With the inspired sagacity of the scholar, he admitted to his solitude only the scholar's natural friend and ally, the cat. Generations of cats sat blinking at him with affectionate contempt as volume after volume of the Variorum drew to its appointed close. Companionable cats accompanied him on his daily walks through sunny garden and shaded avenue, marching before him with tail erect, rubbing themselves condescendingly against his legs, or pausing, with plaintive paw upraised, to intimate that the stroll had lasted long enough. Warrior cats, to whom was granted the boon of an early and honorable death, drank delight of battle with their peers on many a moonlight night, and returned in the morning to show their scars to a master who reverenced valor. Siamese cats, their pale-blue eyes shadowed by desires that no one understood, brought their lonely, troubled little hearts to his feet for solace. And all these wise beasts knew that silence reigned in the long working hours. They lent the grace of their undisturbing presence to the scholar who loved to lift his