Death was particularly busy in my own family: my father fell first, then two of my sisters, and, at last, my mother! Her loss was heaviest of all; and I had scarce recovered from the shock when my kind friend, my good cousin, also caught the disease, and quickly passed away.
One would have thought that these various calamities, coming so quickly upon each other, would have destroyed me at once, or would have so far affected me as to kill me by degrees. The very greatest of them however seemed to produce a contrary effect, and I, who would sometimes mourn for days over a trifling misfortune, found myself sad indeed, but calm under these heavy losses.
The disease passed away; and when I was sufficiently recovered to examine my position, I saw myself mistress of a fine house, left me by my poor cousin, with all her books, papers, musical instruments, and other things, too numerous to mention.
It was on looking over the store of articles which I became thus unexpectedly possessed of, that I discovered a bundle of letters, written in a bold, Cat-like style. Although the ink had become pale with time, and many parts were torn into holes, I yet managed to make out their contents, and learn that they had been written to my cousin in her youth by some Cat of noble birth, who had wished to marry her, but whose attentions she had for some reason refused. Perhaps she had regretted it afterwards, and for that reason had always lived alone; perhaps he had died, or left the city, or——a number of ideas came into my mind about him, and I even tried to imagine what he was like, and whether he at all resembled the Tom in black I had been so rude to some time before.
I then began to consider what I should do with the packet. When I reflected that my cousin had never mentioned the subject, or even the name of her correspondent, I thought the only plan was to be equally silent, and, in order to avoid the remarks of others, put the letters in the fire; for, although I had read them myself, I felt quite persuaded she had no wish that they should be generally known. My resolution was soon taken; and casting the papers one by one into the flames, I watched them slowly burn until there was a little black heap of ashes on the hearth. The last letter was in my paw; I tore it in halves, and threw the first sheet on to the pile; the second was just going the same way, when my eye caught sight of two verses of a song, which I had not observed till then. I stopped and read them through: they were stanzas I had sometimes heard my cousin sing; and although I do not think so much of them now as I did at the time, I preserved them from the flames, and now insert them here in memory of so kind and gentle a Cat:—
With others I may frisk and play,
With others I may talk and sing,
With others pass the live-long day,