The old dog Caesar--His powerful personality--Last days and end--The
old dog's burial--The fact of death is brought home to me--A child's
mental anguish--My mother comforts me--Limitations of the child's
mind--Fear of death--Witnessing the slaughter of cattle--A man in the
moat--Margarita, the nursery maid--Her beauty and lovableness--Her
death--I refuse to see her dead.



When recalling the impressions and experiences of that most eventful
sixth year, the one incident which looks biggest in memory, at all
events in the last half of that year, is the death of Caesar. There is
nothing in the past I can remember so well: it was indeed the most
important event of my childhood--the first thing in a young life which
brought the eternal note of sadness in.

It was in the early spring, about the middle of August, and I can even
remember that it was windy weather and bitterly cold for the time of
year, when the old dog was approaching his end.

Caesar was an old valued dog, although of no superior breed: he was
just an ordinary dog of the country, short-haired, with long legs and
a blunt muzzle. The ordinary dog or native cur was about the size of a
Scotch collie; Caesar was quite a third larger, and it was said of him
that he was as much above all other dogs of the house, numbering about
twelve or fourteen, in intelligence and courage as in size. Naturally,
he was the leader and master of the whole pack, and when he got up
with an awful growl, baring his big teeth, and hurled himself on the
others to chastise them for quarrelling or any other infringement of
dog law, they took it lying down. He was a black dog, now in his old