PETS OF GENIUS

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 94, 14 January 1939, Page 6 (Supplement)

PETS OF GENIUS

When faced by a shy genius, ask him about his dog. There could be no safer rule, for the most austere of important people seem to have a weakness, for their favourite animals, said Cicely Poehin, in “John ©’London’s Weekly.” Sir Isaac Newton’s was so great that he could eveiPforgive serious interference with his work. At Cambridge he had a small dog called Diamond, which was accidentally shut up in his study one morning while Newton attended church. When lie returned he found that; the dog had upset a candle on his desk, and papers containing the minutes of years of work were destroyed. But when Newton discovered the damage there was no tumult. He picked up the dog and said: “Ah, Diamond, thou little knowest Hie mischief thou hast done.”

Abraham Lincoln was a great lover both of dogs and cats. In the earl;’ days he never left home to attend the legislature without giving strict orders for the care of his pets. He would sit happily witli a couple of kittens on his knees, play witli them, compare their heads and decide Hint “Jane hath a better countenance than Susan.” Once when his dog was stranded on the farther bank of a stream, Lincoln left his Qirotesting friends and waded through the icy water to fetch him.

Napoleon could hardly be counted among the great animal-lovers. In 1797 he aired his grievance to Arnault, a.s he watched Josephine fondling her ugly pet. “You see that dog there?” lie said : “well, he is my rival. He was in possession of Madnme's bedroom when I married her. I wished to'dispose him, but—what use! I was told I must resign myself to sleep elsewhere or consent to share it with him.”