And dogs. Are they really so affectionate, or are they also a little
shrewd in licking the hand that feeds them? I dislike to be pessimistic.
But when my dogs come bounding to meet me for a jolly morning greeting
they do seem expectant and hungry rather than affectionate. At other
hours of the day they plead with loving eyes and wagging tails for a
walk or a seat in the carriage or permission to follow the wagon.

But I will not analyze their motives. They fill the house and grounds
with life and frolic, and a farm would be incomplete if they were
missing. Hamerton, in speaking of the one dog, the special pet and dear
companion of one's youth, observes that "the comparative shortness of
the lives of dogs is the only imperfection in the relation between them
and us. If they had lived to three-score and ten, man and dog might have
traveled through life together, but, as it is, we must either have a
succession of affections, or else, when the first is buried in its early
grave, live in a chill condition of dog-less-ness."

I thank him for that expressive compound word. Almost every one might,
like Grace Greenwood and Gautier, write a History of my Pets and make a
readable book. Carlyle, the grand old growler, was actually attached to
a little white dog--his wife's special delight, for whom she used to
write cute little notes to the master. And when he met with a fatal
accident, he was tenderly nursed by both for months, and when the doctor
was at last obliged to put him out of pain by prussic acid, their grief
was sincere. They buried him at the top of the garden in Cheyne Row, and
planted cowslips round his grave, and his mistress placed a stone
tablet, with name and date, to mark the last resting place of her
blessed dog.

"I could not have believed," writes Carlyle in the Memorials, "my grief