and throwing himself on the sofa, sobbed for half an hour. One of the
chickens hatched the day before had been crushed under his foot as he
was walking in the chicken-house, and no murderer could have felt more
keenly the pangs of remorse. The other boys looked on curiously at this
exhibition of feeling, and it was indeed an unusual outburst. But it was
strongly characteristic of him through life, and nothing would so excite
his anger as cruelty to an animal, while every neglected, friendless
dog or persecuted cat always found in him a champion and a friend.

In illustration of this humane instinct it is recalled that a few weeks
before he died a lady visiting the house found his room swarming with
flies. In response to her exclamation of astonishment he explained that
a day or two before he had seen a poor, half-frozen fly on the
window-pane outside, and he had been moved by a kindly impulse to open
the window and admit her. "And this," he added, "is what I get for it.
That ungrateful creature is, as you perceive, the grandmother of eight
thousand nine hundred and seventy-six flies!"

That the birds that flew about his house in Buena Park knew his voice
has been demonstrated more than once. He would keep bread crumbs
scattered along the window-sill for the benefit, as he explained, of
the blue jays and the robins who were not in their usual robust health
or were too overcome by the heat to make customary exertion. If the
jays were particularly noisy he would go into the yard and expostulate
with them in a tone of friendly reproach, whereupon, the family
affirms, they would apparently apologize and fly away. Once he
maintained at considerable expense a thoroughly hopeless and useless
donkey, and it was his custom, when returning from the office at any
hour of the night, to go into the back yard and say "Poor old Don" in a
bass voice that carried a block away, whereupon old Don would lift up