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Show Some Pets of the Poets. ( r i ' 1 i Glen Hathaway in Ladies' World. Fairious among pet lovers as well as among poets is Sir Walter Scott, as anyone might guess after, v reading his -works, with their strong, Christian -j t-pirit. and their many sympathetic studies of aui- cials and breezy outdoor adventures. : One of his first pets was a shaggy Shetland ; pony, -scarcely larger than a Newfoundland dog. I lie taught it to coir.c clattering into the dining-1 dining-1 ; room for dainties and, lame though he was. he gal loped it fearlessly over the rough Scottish mo.ors. ! ' . Later on. the names and traits of his horses arc set down in his letters nnd lairies as if they i were human friends. Few of them liked to le fed by anyone hut their master. Brown Adam would Jet no one mount him but Scott, and broke the 1 bones of 1vo grooms who attempted it, but when the well known saddle was put on his back he would trot along out of the stable and around the drive to the mounting stone, to "stand like a rock"' till his matter came, j. Beautiful snow-white Daisy was less faithful, and though fond of Scott in his presence, forgot him after a short absence and could never be tamed by him again, i. ' And when Sir Walter's great, gay hunting-par- ; lies and breackneck coursing were all over, we hear , much of quiet Sybil Grey, named out of a line in ''Marmion.'"' one of her master's best poems, and I finally of ''Douce Davie, the Covenanter' a friedly, ' ; Intelligent pony who bore the old man on his last ; rides about the Abbotsford woods. He had other, odder outdoor pels, too; for just ' because his was such a strong and brave and manly nature, it overflowed in kindness to all living things. Gog and Magog, the great ploughing oxen, !.f were remembered by Iiim long after they had gone the way of all flesh, f One year at Abbotsford a hen struck up a' great - friendship for him; and another year a little black ' 1 pig bestowed on him an undesired devotion, and f tried to follow him even when he rode out hunting l with his dogs. Of course had had dogs a great many of them, I, Indeed. "Highland staghound ami wiry Skye terrier, ter-rier, fowling dogs and graceful greyhounds, were mlways with him," writes a friend of his. Xor did ; lie over fail to care for and talk kindly to his dogs when hey grew lld and feeble and (some would have said) good for nothing. ' -.jong his special favorites were the greyhound1-, Ximrod, Hamlet, who would kill sheep :a ' capital crime in a dog but who wereforgive 11 and wnn from it by his master, and "the brave perey," who has a monument at Abbotsford. Camp was a very fierce terrier, but was always gentle to Ins master and the children, with whom he was a trustgd playmate. When he died Scott.' excused himself from a1 tending a dinner party, "on Recount of the death of a dear friend," and "all.the .. family," Scott's daughter tells us. "stood in tears about the dog's grave in the garden." Maida was a staghound, "six feet long from "tip, of nose to tail: high and strong in proportion,"and" ! ns noble and intelligent as -he was huge. He was Scott's favorite of all pets, and is owe oftthe famous fa-mous dogs of the world. .Yet. he had a. rival. .in a cat. This was Hinse of Hinsefeldt,. named from a German fairy story a fat, sleek old pussy who used to sit purring on a footstool beside Seott while ' be wrote. ' As for !Mairla, anyone who wants to know more , of him should read "Woodstock." Bevis, the superb su-perb hound in that novel, who so faithfully guards ais young mistress, Alice Lee, follows all his brave rld master's fortunes devotedly, and flies fearlessly ! at Cromwell's soldiers for his sake, is Maida himself. him-self. ... . . Maida was buried at Abbotsford. before the I dooor he had so often guarded in life. His like- ness was rudely cut on the block of stone above I , him. and 'under it -was engraved a Latin epitaph, I which runs in English:- - 1 . F.encath the sculptured form which late you wore, j j Sleep soundly, Maida, at your master's cioor. f Another dog with an epitaph was Boatswain, .Lord Uyron s JNewl midland. J i is monument is f fctiil a conspicuous ornament, in the garden of Xew- J ! f-tead Abbey, his master's stately old English home, I though he died over eighty years ago; and as his I very long epitaph is always -printed among Byron's I poems, his memory is : likely "to outlast even his ! ; monument. Byron had many large dogs before ; : flrd after Boatswain, but no other was loved like I ; j him. I ) And another . epitaph on an animal which is ; : fllso a noted poem was written for his pet cat by J ij Thomas Gray, whose perfect "Elegy in a Country J Churchyard," almost everyone has read. This cat, "the pensive Sclima,-demurest of the tabby kind," I was beautiful, vain and greedy, and -was drowned f j by accident while trying to steal some goldfish out J i nf an aquarium. Her full description and the' I ! ; : whole story of her trespass and death are preserved I ' to this day in her masters works. I n A cat of much more solid and respectable char- 1 aeter was Hodge, who belonged to Dr. Samuel I Johnson. lodge purred end dozen on the writing J table wliile his master worked, and when he mewed I to announce that it was dinner time the poet would. I top writing and go out to buy the cat his regular j ration of oysters. The kindly, queer, gruff old doe- I ir feared that if a servant were set, to wait on I Hodge, he might perhaps go hungry. , Southpy also loved cats, though, unlike Johnson I and Gray, he had a great many of them. In his . J happiest days, Greta Hall, his big, rambling old I country houe; was always merry with children, j his own and others whom he partly adopted, and j 1 -warming wiah cats. I ; A house, lie declared, could not be completely j '; furnished for comfort without a child of 3 years 1 ld and a kitten of six weeks. "Kitten," he wrote, ' ' j in the animal world what a rosebud is in the j ; garden." f ; ; Among the eats Southey wrote most of are Lord I : Nelson, ugly but excellent, and the. beautiful Mn- dame Bianchi. with her niece Pulcheria. who both I S ' - ran away, broken-hearted, when the children's kind II old nurse died. Ovid and Virgil and Othello the j J Moor perished miserably; but "the never-enough-II. to-be-praised Kumpelstilzchen (afterward raised i for service against rats to be His Serene Highness the Archduke .Kumpelstilzchen) and the equally to be praised Hurlyburlybus," both lived and flourished flour-ished in spite of their names! . After these examples, who need be laughed out of a liking for cats? Those who have read Burns' beautiful, tender ( poems about "The Twa Dogs," and the old mare Maggie's 2ew Year, and even the wounded hare end the poor little field mouse, whose bit of a home ' ho broke" up. when ploughing, must feel that the ; wold, reckless poet had a heart to. yet every beast about him. But his especial pots were some sheep he kept on his farm 'at Ellisland. Of one of them, called Mailie, he tells us that Through a' the farm fhe -trotted by him; A lang- half-mile Fhe could descry him; WT kindly bleat, when the did spy him, She ran wi' speed; , A friend mair faithfu' ne'er came nigh him. . Other odd pots were the three wild hares which Cowper tamed by gentleness, and whose pretty, af-I af-I fectionate ways helped to brighten part of his sad, j but always kindly life. I So great a comfort have animals sometimes ' . been to lonely and unhappy men that Ebeneezer 1 Elliott, "the corn-law rhymer," onee wrote that he I i could not bear to live were it not for the love of his cat and dog. I Ilobert Browning seemed to exhaust the list of j odd pets in his boyhood. When only a few years y- . old, Jie. found a couple of lady-bugs feebly sunning themselves on a wall one winter day, and ejierished them for some time in a bos.'.Uiifed Atfith'. cottonwool and labeled: "Animals fotmd. feurviying-v iwj the de)ths4of a severe winter.";, j." .' X A little later he owned -owls and noiilveys.Biag-pies noiilveys.Biag-pies and.hedgehogs, an oagle-ana'.'dupeiP'fc.'Iarge snakes. Jlis motfler helped irinltake care -of 'them, and encouraged his fondness for theni. : When an old niau, he told admiringly, of the skill and tenderness ten-derness with which she took into her lap.'a mangled man-gled cat' he had rescued and brought hoine.l sewed uj its ghastly .wouijd, and assisted him in nursing it back to health. , . " And when he was one of the most famous poets po-ets of our time, his writings showed that. lie-' still loved animals, studied their -ways, and despised those who abused them. Robert Browning's wife was as great a poot as he, aixUier works give glimpses of her pets, few but dear. "Moses, the black- pony," was her darling when a romping little girl in -the -lovely country of the Malvern hills. Much later, while an invalid in-valid . shut up in smokv, London, she wrote some charming verses about her Indian, doves, who used to perch on her...shouIders as she iTead. and whose nestlings it "would be such a '"delight to her to help bring up." 'Flush, her lap-dog. "who was a gentleman," has two poems to himself ; -and he deserved de-served them, if ever a faithful friend did. Yet perhaps "the" best lines eyex , written about the love of animals are some by. a. poet of whose pets we know -nothing, if he -ever, had 1 any. His name was Coleridge, and this is what he wrote: He prayeth well who Ioveth.well Both man and bird and beast. - . . . He prayeth best who loveth best '1 All things both great and 6mall; , For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all. i |