FONDNESS FOR ANIMALS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue III, 20 July 1895, Page 87

FONDNESS FOR ANIMALS.

BY

FRANK H. STAUFFER.

There are numerous anecdotes about noted people who were fond of animals, and we are pretty sure that they were fond of them when they were boys and girls. Daniel Webster loved his calves dearly, and used to get his son Fletcher out of bed before daylight to hold the lantern while he fed the cows. * Fletcher,’ he would say, * you don’t seem to take any interest in this. I like to look into the kind faces of the cows, and smell their breath.’ When Choate was bis guest he used to rap at the door of his room where he was reading, and call to the great jurist, * Oh, come along, Choate, let’s go and have a look at the pigs.’ Webster ordered his farm hand to drive the oxen past the library windows, so that he could ‘ tell them good-bye ' before he died.

It was said of Edmund Burke that he had gone crazy, because he went about in his park kissing his cows and horses. The story arose from the fact that a favourite horse belonging to his dead son came up to Mr Burke in the field, laid his head upon his breast, and looked into his face, as if to say, ‘I have lost him too.’ Overcome by his memories, Burke clasped the neck of the intelligent creature and kissed it. I, one night, with others, watched a favourite mare of mine as she lay dying in the stable. She was in great agony, and her big eyes were aflame with fever. My son, a lad of fourteen, had taught her to kiss him, which she did by placing her nose against his cheek. * Kiss me, Dollie,’ he said. The dying horse struggled to her front feet, touched his cheek, and died a few minutes afterwards. The show of affectionate obedience was so touching that the most of us walked away with tears in our eyes, while the boy sobbed as if his heart was broken. Canon Kingsley was passionately fond of animals. He was very much attached to his horse, and a Scotch terrier was for thirteen years a constant companion in his parish walks. He kept white cats at his barn, and black cats at his house. He took much interest in the toads in his garden, and encouraged mud-wasps to build homes on the inner ledge of the windows in his bedroom. His children were taught to be kind to all living things One morning his little daughter surprised bis guests at breakfast by running into the room with a repulsive-looking worm in her hand. ‘ Oh, daddy, look ar this delightful worm !’ she exclaimed. Strange to say, Mr Kingsley had an aversion for spiders, which he could not conquer. The sight of one would almost bring on a paroxysm of horror. Bayard Taylor loved dumb creatures, and said of them : * I always treat animals with great respect. I ask myself how should I like to be treated by man were I a dumb creature ?’

One of Mrs Browning’s most exquisite poems is addressed to her dog Flush, while Miss Mitford was so fond of her sagacious dog Mosaic that she said he had a brow like Mr Fox, and she buried him with funeral honours after his death. Lord Byron was very much attached to his dog Boatswain. He bad a marble monument with an elaborate inscription erected to bis memory. Many of onr readers are familiar with the story of the fondness of * Mary for her little lamb that followed her to school one day,’ but all of them may not know that there really was such a Mary and such a lamb. The original Mary was Mrs Mary E. Tyler, who was still living at Somerville, Massachusetts, some years ago, hale and vigorous at the age of eighty-two. She raised the lamb from its birth, its mother having deserted it. It followed her • everywhere she went,’ and finally died in her arms, having been gored by a cow. Mrs Tyler did not write the now famous verses; three of them were written by John Roul stone, who lived in the neighbourhood, and the other two were afterward added by a Mrs Townsend. Mrs Tyler knit two pairs of stockings from the fleece of her lamb, and these stockings in later years were unravelled and sold in small bits, tied to a card with Mary’s autograph on it, at a fair held for the benefit of the Old South Church of Boston, and the sum realised amounted to two hundred dollars. Hans Christian Andersen, whose stories delight children so much, was exceedingly kind-hearted. He was fond of animals, but for some reason was dreadfully afraid of dogs.

He on one occasion wrote to an intimate friend at Geneva that he would visit him on a certain day. On the day in question a large but perfectly gentle Newfoundland dog was securely chained, but Mr Andersen did not put in an appearance. Three weeks afterward a letter, postmarked Nice, was received from him. * Dear friends,' he wrote, ‘ I arrived at your house on the day named, but when I got to the gate I saw such a big dog in the yard that I did not dare to go in, and so I took the first train for Italy.’ Not a few great men have been partial to cats. I’etranh had his cat embalmed ; Rousseau shed genuine tears over the lose of bis; Dr. Johnson, sometimes called the‘Great Bear,’ nursed his cat day and night during its illness, and went himself for oysters to tempt its appetite ; Southey raised one of hie cats to the peerage, with the high-sounding title of * Earl of Tomlemagne, Baron Raticide, Waowlher, and Skaratcbi.’ To Napoleon, however, cats were a mortal terror. Just after the battle of Wagram an aide-de-camp, upon enrering the Emperor’s room, saw him half undressed, with protruding eyes and perspiring forehead, making frequent lunges with a sword at the tapestry around the room. In explanation he said there was a cat behind the tapestry, and that he had hated cats from his very infancy. He had crossed the bridge at Lodi with sublime courage, yet quivered with excitement and terror over the presence of a cat.