one of her dreadful spells of bleeding and gasping for breath, she
came to me trembling, with beseeching, heartbreaking looks, and after
I had bathed her head and tried to soothe and pet her, she lay down
and gasped and died. All the family gathered about her, weeping, with
aching hearts. Then dust to dust.

She was the most faithful, intelligent, playful, affectionate,
human-like horse I ever knew, and she won all our hearts. Of the many
advantages of farm life for boys one of the greatest is the gaining a
real knowledge of animals as fellow-mortals, learning to respect them
and love them, and even to win some of their love. Thus godlike
sympathy grows and thrives and spreads far beyond the teachings of
churches and schools, where too often the mean, blinding, loveless
doctrine is taught that animals have neither mind nor soul, have no
rights that we are bound to respect, and were made only for man, to be
petted, spoiled, slaughtered, or enslaved.

At first we were afraid of snakes, but soon learned that most of them
were harmless. The only venomous species seen on our farm were the
rattlesnake and the copperhead, one of each. David saw the rattler,
and we both saw the copperhead. One day, when my brother came in from
his work, he reported that he had seen a snake that made a queer buzzy
noise with its tail. This was the only rattlesnake seen on our farm,
though we heard of them being common on limestone hills eight or ten
miles distant. We discovered the copperhead when we were ploughing,
and we saw and felt at the first long, fixed, half-charmed, admiring
stare at him that he was an awfully dangerous fellow. Every fibre of
his strong, lithe, quivering body, his burnished copper-colored head,
and above all his fierce, able eyes, seemed to be overflowing full of
deadly power, and bade us beware. And yet it is only fair to say that