James Parton, Horace Greeley, T. W. Higginson, J. S. C. Abbott, E. M. Hoppin, William Winter, Theodore Tilton, Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. E. C. Stanton, Women of the age; being natives of the lives and deeds of the most prominent women of the present gentlemen

[216] companions, not subjects for early tombstones and obituary notices, but with broad chests, sun-kissed faces, and nimble limbs and tongues,--children who behaved naturally for their age; who twitched away books and balls from their owners, and pouted, and sometimes struck, and often got mad, and strutted when they wore fine clothes, and told lies,--“real whoppers,” --and took the biggest half of the apple, and were generally aggravating, as exuberant, healthy childhood always is.

Then little Mary had other companions less aggressive in the birds, the bees, and the grasshoppers. She went Maying, too, on May mornings, as every true-born New England child should, as I myself have done, whether the sky were blue or black; whether she shivered or was warm in a white gown; whether the May-flowers were in blossom for May-day wreaths, or the snow-flakes were coming down instead. She had chickens, too, and when they first came, she fed them with soaked and sweetened cracker; later, she made fricassees of them, and omelets of their eggs. She had three cats; one, named Molly after herself; another, a hideous, saffron-colored, forlorn, little wretch, that was abandoned by an Irish family, and which she felicitously baptized Rory O'More. This cat one day crept into the oven. Mary, ignorant of the fact, shut the door, wishing to retain the heat. Hearing a stifled “mew,” she opened it, and out flew the cat and plunged through the house outside into the nearest snow-bank, from whence she emerged, with true Irish elasticity, right-end up, and as good as new. The third cat little Mary housed was a perfect savage; her mistress never being able to catch sight of her save in her fierce and lightning-like transits through the house. These cats fought each other, scratched, and made the fur fly, stole chickens, and gave that zest and excitement to her childish days which might well astonish our city-prisoned urchins,--shut up with