We had a cat, and the cat had had kittens a day or two before. Aunt Lizzie came into the nursery, where Una and I were building houses of blocks, and sat down in the big easy-chair. The cat was in the room, and she immediately came up to my aunt and began to mew and to pluck at her dress with her claws. Such attentions were rare on pussy's part, and my aunt noticed them with pleasure, and caressed the animal, which still continued to devote its entire attention to her. But there was something odd in the sound of her mewing and in the intent regard of her yellow eyes. "Can anything be the matter with pussy?" speculated my aunt. At that moment my father entered the room, and my aunt rose to greet him. Then the massacre was revealed, for she had been sitting upon the kittens. Their poor mother pounced upon them with a yowl, but it was too late. My dear aunt was rather a heavy woman, and she had been sitting there fifteen minutes. We all stood appalled in the presence of the great mystery. One day a big man, with a brown beard and shining brown eyes, who bubbled over with enthusiasm and fun, made his appearance and talked volubly about something, and went away again, and my father and mother smiled at each other. The Scarlet Letter had been written, and James T. Fields had read it, and declared it the greatest book of the age. So that was the last of Salem. II Horatio Bridge's "I-told-you-so"--What a house by the sea might have done--Unknown Lenox--The restlessness of youth-- The Unpardonable Sin and the Deathless Man--The little red house--Materials of culture--Our best playmates--The mystery of Mrs. Peter's dough--Our intellectual hen--Fishing for poultry--Yacht-building--Swimming with one foot on the ground--Shipwreck--Our playfellow the brook--Tanglewood-- Nuts--Giants and enchanters--Coasting--Wet noses, dark eyes, ambrosial breath--My first horseback ride--Herman Melville's stories--Another kind of James--The thunder-storm--Yearning ladies and melancholy sinners--Hindlegs--Probable murder--"I abominate the sight of it!"--The peril of Tanglewood--The truth of fiction--An eighteen-months' work--We leave five cats behind. Horatio Bridge, my father's college friend, was a purser in the navy and lived in Augusta, Maine, his official residence being at Portsmouth. He had kept in closer touch with the romancer than any of his other friends had since their graduating days, and he had been from the first a believer in his coming literary renown. So, when The Scarlet Letter shone eminent in the firmament of book-land, it was his triumphant "I-told-you-so" that was among the earliest to be heard. And when my father cast about for a more congenial place than Salem to live in, it was to Bridge that he applied for suggestions. He stipulated that the place should be somewhere along the New England sea-coast.