Volume 8 — SOME ANIMAL STORIES

THE TALE OF PETER RABBIT

By Beatrix Potter

Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were—Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter.

They lived with their mother in a sand-bank, underneath the root of a very big fir-tree.

"Now, my dears," said old Mrs. Rabbit, one morning, "you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don't go into Mr. McGregor's garden; your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor. Now run along, and don't get into mischief. I am going out."

Then old Mrs. Rabbit took a basket and her umbrella, and went through the wood to the baker's. She bought a loaf of brown bread and five currant buns.

Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, who were good little bunnies, went down the lane to gather blackberries; but Peter, who was very naughty, ran straight away to Mr. McGregor's garden, and squeezed under the gate. First he ate some lettuces and some French beans; and then he ate some radishes; and then, feeling rather sick, he went to look for some parsley.

But round the end of a cucumber frame, whom should he meet but Mr. McGregor!

Mr. McGregor was on his hands and knees planting out young cabbages, but he jumped up and ran after Peter, waving a rake and calling out, "Stop thief!"

Peter was most dreadfully frightened; he rushed all over the garden, for he had forgotten the way back to the gate.

He lost one of his shoes among the cabbages, and the other shoe among the potatoes. After losing them, he ran on four legs and went faster, so that I think he might have got away altogether if he had not unfortunately run into a gooseberry net, and got caught by the large buttons on his jacket. It was a blue jacket with brass buttons, quite new. Peter gave himself up for lost, and shed big tears; but his sobs were overheard by some friendly Sparrows, who flew to him in great excitement, and implored him to exert himself.

Mr. McGregor came up with a sieve, which he intended to pop upon the top of Peter; but Peter wriggled out just in time, leaving his jacket behind him, and rushed into the tool-shed, and jumped into a can. It would have been a beautiful thing to hide in, if it had not had so much water in it.

Mr. McGregor was quite sure that Peter was somewhere in the tool-shed, perhaps hidden underneath a flower-pot. He began to turn them over carefully, looking under each.

Presently Peter sneezed—"Kertyschoo!" Mr. McGregor was after him in no time, and tried to put his foot upon Peter, who jumped out of a window, upsetting three plants. The window was too small for Mr. McGregor, and he was tired of running after Peter. He went back to his work.

Peter sat down, to rest; he was out of breath and trembling with fright, and he had not the least idea which way to go. Also he was very damp with sitting in that can.

After a time he began to wander about, going lippity—lippity—not very fast, and looking all round. He found a door in a wall; but it was locked, and there was no room for a fat little Rabbit to squeeze underneath.

An old Mouse was running in and out over the stone door-step, carrying peas and beans to her family in the wood. Peter asked her the way to the gate, but she had such a large pea in her mouth that she could not answer. She only shook her head at him. Peter began to cry.

Then he tried to find his way straight across the garden, but he became more and more puzzled. Presently, he came to a pond where Mr. McGregor filled his water-cans. A white Cat was staring at some Gold-fish; she sat very, very still, but now and then the tip of her tail twitched as if it were alive. Peter thought it best to go away without speaking to her, he had heard about Cats from his cousin, little Benjamin Bunny.

He went back towards the tool-shed, but suddenly, quite close to him, he heard the noise of a hoe—scr-r-ritch, scratch, scratch, scritch. Peter scuttered underneath the bushes. But presently, as nothing happened, he came out, and climbed upon a wheelbarrow, and peeped over. The first thing he saw was Mr. McGregor hoeing onions. His back was turned towards Peter, and beyond him was the gate!

Peter got down very quietly off the wheelbarrow, and started running as fast as he could go, along a straight walk behind some black-currant bushes.

Mr. McGregor caught sight of him at the corner, but Peter did not care. He slipped underneath the gate, and was safe at last in the wood outside the garden.

Mr. McGregor hung up the little jacket and the shoes for a scare-crow to frighten the Blackbirds.

Peter never stopped running or looked behind him till he got home to the big fir-tree.

He was so tired that he flopped down upon the nice soft sand on the floor of the rabbit-hole, and shut his eyes. His mother was busy cooking; she wondered what he had done with his clothes. It was the second little jacket and pair of shoes that Peter had lost in a fortnight!

I am sorry to say that Peter was not very well during the evening.

His mother put him to bed, and made some camomile tea; and she gave a dose of it to Peter!

"One tablespoonful to be taken at bed-time."

But Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail had bread and milk and blackberries, for supper.

LIONS AND TIGERS

Anonymous

The Lioness was wide awake, but two of the little Lion Cubs were rather sleepy. The third one however, who had perched himself on his mother's back, was quite livety: he had not had quite so much for dinner as the others.

"Mother," he began, "what do all these two-legged things come and look at us for? And why have they got such funny skins? Do they ever have anything to eat, mother—bones, and things like that?"

"Don't purr so loudly, my dear," said the Lioness, or you'll wake your brother and sister. These two-legged things are people—the big ones are called men and women, and the little ones are boys and girls. They don't do us any harm; indeed, some of them are very kind to us—they give us our dinner, and clean straw in our houses, and help to make us comfortable. They do their best, poor things, so you mustn't growl at them."

"Look, mother," said the Lion Cub, "that small thing with the white skin has thrown something into our house! What does she think we shall do with it?"

"Don't take any notice of her, my dear." said the Lioness, blinking her eyes at the little girl (who was "the small thing with the white skin"); "it's only something that they call bread—she thinks that we shall eat it. But it's really only fit for elephants or bears; we don't eat stuff like that. I tasted it once, I remember, but that was a long time ago, when I was very, very hungry, and glad to get anything I could."

"When was that, mother?" said the baby Lion. "Do tell me about it."

"Ah, I didn't always live in a house like this, my dear," replied the Lioness. "I was born far away from here, in a place called Africa, and I was quite grown-up before I saw a man at all. We used to live very happily there in my young days—though it wasn't such an easy life as that we have now. There was no one to bring you your dinner regularly every day; no, you had to catch your dinner first and then eat it, and sometimes we had to go a long time with nothing but a very small antelope or perhaps a bird or two."

The Lion Cub's eyes opened wide with astonishment.

"What is Africa like, mother?" he said. "Did anyone else live there?"

"Dear me, yes," answered the Lioness. "All sorts of creatures. There were antelopes and snakes, and several of our own relations, and hosts of others besides."

The Lion Cub thought for a little while. Then he said, "Why did you come here, then, mother?"

The Lioness growled slightly. From the next cage there came a loud roar, waking the two sleeping Lion Cubs, and startling the other so much that he tumbled off his mother's back.

"Ho, ho, ho!" said a deep voice. "I remember! It seemed such a nice fat young calf, didn't it?" It was the big Lion next door. The Lioness seemed quite vexed; she had not known that the Lion was listening. But he had been, and now he seemed to be in a very good humor, and went on purring and talking to himself, but the little Lion Cubs could easily hear what he was saying, and paid the greatest attention.

"Yes," he went on, "and it was a nice fat young calf, too; I saw it first, and I remember thinking that it would make such a fine dinner for us both. I never dreamed that there were hunters about, and it was a trap to catch us; of course I was quite young in those days. But it was a trap, and we were both caught."

"I needn't have been caught," growled the Lioness from the back of her cage, "if I hadn't come to see what you were doing."

"Ah, well," said the Lion. "We were both of us deceived. And then they put us into small, strong cages and took us over the great big water and brought us here. I often think of the days when we were free, but we get along very well here, don't we? It's no use making a fuss about what you can't help, and really these two-legged creatures are very amusing."

"Yes," said the Lioness, still with a little growl in her voice, "but one needn't pretend that one wouldn't rather be free. Those pumas, now, are always saying how much better it is always to live in a cage."

The Lion shook his mane scornfully. "Pumas!" he said. "Who would take any notice of what a puma would say? They call themselves 'friends of man!' They're only friendly because they daren't be anything else."

"Do they come from Africa, too, mother?" said the Lion Cub.

"No, they live in America, my dear," replied the Lioness. "But come, it's time we went out into the garden at the back of the house. You must have a little fresh air." So saying, she stalked through the little door at the back of the cage and went out, followed by her Cubs, into the open space beyond.

"Good afternoon," said a lazy, sleepy voice from the other side of the bars. "It's quite a fine day, isn't it?"

The three little Cubs all turned with a start. There was the Tiger, stretched out in the sun, looking at them with a sleepy sort of smile.

Of course, it wasn't a garden really, it was just a large open-air cage, but there were rocks and trees dotted about all over it, and it certainly looked very pleasant in the warm afternoon sunshine.

He was a very handsome fellow, was the Tiger, and he evidently knew it, too. The Lioness greeted him pleasantly, and said with a purr as she stretched herself out on the ground, "These young people of mine were just asking me all sorts of questions; perhaps you can tell them something interesting that has happened to you?"

"Ee-yow!" yawned the Tiger.

"Do, please," begged the little Lion Cubs, poking their noses against the bars. "Do you come from Africa, too?" added the first one.

"No," answered the Tiger, "I come from India. I used to live in the jungle."

"And were you caught in a trap, too?" said the eager little Lion Cub.

"Gr-r-r-!" said the Tiger, suddenly beginning to growl. "There he goes!" It was an Elephant, which was slowly walking along in the distance with a number of children on his back. The Tiger looked after him with a very angry look in his eyes, and not until he was quite out of sight did he become quiet again. Then he said to the Lioness, "Excuse me, but I never see that fellow without thinking how it was one of his relations that helped to capture me. Ah, I shall never forget it. I wasn't full-grown then, and I used to live with my father and mother and my young brother in a cosy little home in the jungle. Most of the men-creatures who lived near us over there were brown, you know, not white like the ones we see over here. My father was getting old, and food had become very scarce. One night my father paid a visit to one of the men-creatures' villages and brought us home a goat, and the next night he brought us a sheep. It seemed very easy to get food that way, but the men-creatures didn't like it, I suppose."

"Oh, sir," said the smallest Lion Cub, "please tell me, did you ever eat a man?"

The Tiger smiled. "No," he said, "I never did, but my father—".

"Don't you think we'd better get on with the story?" put in the Lioness.

"Well," said the Tiger, "one day there was a dreadful noise—shouting and banging of drums and all sorts of things, and crowds of the brown men came into the jungle, waking us up out of our afternoon nap. We were very much startled at first, but my father told us not to be afraid, and said he would look after us. Presently we saw one of those wretched elephants coming along, and, would you believe it, he had actually allowed some of the white men to get into a sort of castle on his back, where they could shoot at us in safety! Of course, it was no good. My poor father was killed, and so was my mother; they captured me, and I was brought here over the water, and here I have been ever since."

The Tiger stretched himself out at full length and yawned again; he seemed to be quite tired by his long speech.

"Don't you ever want to be back again in the jungle?" said one of the Lion Cubs.

"Well," said the Tiger, "sometimes, when it's cold and damp and foggy, I do. But it's fairly comfortable here, on the whole. Now, I must wash myself." And he began to lick his coat, just as a cat does, and the Lion Cubs, seeing that there was nothing more to be got out of him, that afternoon, started a game between themselves.

APES AND MONKEYS

Anonymous

"Who was it that pulled my tail?" said the cross old Monkey sitting in the corner of the cage. "I won't have my tail pulled, do you hear? If any one pulls my tail again, I'll—"

"Well, what will you do, Crosspatch?" said a small brown Monkey. "Do tell us; we should like to know." And he threw a nut-shell at the cross old Monkey, hitting him on the nose and making him crosser than ever.

"Ill complain to the keeper," said the old Monkey. "I'll steal all your dinners. I'll—I'll—I'll do something dreadful to you."

"Oh, go along," said the little brown Monkey. "Let's have a game at Touch Tails. You're 'he'!" And he gave a hard tug at the cross old Monkey's tail, then darted away up to the top of the cage, with the old one after him and a number of other small Monkeys after him, giving a pull at his tail every now and then, till he didn't know which one to attack first, and finally gave it up as a bad job, and retired to his corner again, jabbering away to himself as to what he would do, while all the others danced about with delight and swung to and fro on the ropes, chuckling with enjoyment.

"What a noise those Monkeys do make, to be sure!" said the Chimpanzee to the Orang-Utangs. "I really think something should be done to stop them."

"Here comes some of these little men-things!" said one of the Orang-Utangs. "What queer things they are! Are they really relations of ours, do you suppose?"

"I don't know," replied the Chimpanzee, "but I must say they are very poor relations, if they are. Whatever do they put on all those ridiculous things for?"

"Yes," said the eldest Orang-Utang. "And what very short arms they have! I don't believe they'd be any good at swinging about on trees, do you?"

"I'm sure they wouldn't," answered the Chimpanzee. "And then their feet! Do you know they can't use their feet at all for holding on to anything as we can? Isn't it silly? They're so ashamed of them that they cover them up in things they call boots; it must be very uncomfortable."

"Have you noticed what they do with nuts?" said the smallest Orang-Utang. "There was a boy here once who wanted to eat a nut, and he was going to crack it in the ordinary way, when his mother said to him, 'Don't do that, my dear, you'll spoil your teeth!' Just fancy!"

"Ah, but have you ever seen one of the very small men-things?" said the Chimpanzee. "The things they call 'long-clothes babies'! They are the most absurd creatures you ever saw in your life. They are covered with white things (which must get dreadfully in the way), and they can't do a single thing for themselves. They can't walk, and they can't talk, and they don't eat fruits—they just lie still, and sometimes they feebly kick about and wave their funny little arms, and the strange part of it is that their mothers and fathers seem quite proud of them. I'm very glad we're not like that."

"So am I," said the Orang-Utangs. "But why do these men-things wear such a lot of things over their skins?" said the eldest.

"Oh, they don't know any better," said the Chimpanzee. "You know they are not nearly so strong as we are."

"Ah, but they're very artful, some of them," said the eldest Orang-Utang. "I should think if they were caught young, you might be able to teach them to do quite a lot of tricks."

"I dare say," replied the Chimpanzee. "Only I expect it would take a lot of trouble and time."

"I'm glad I'm not a man-thing," said the youngest Orang-Utang. "It must be horrid to have to wear clothes."

"There are those Monkeys again," said the Chimpanzee. "I wonder what they are doing now. They are always up to some game or other. I declare they are nearly as foolish as men."

The Monkeys seemed to be all running after each other, fighting and squabbling, and grabbing at lettuce and pieces of banana, and making grimaces at each other, and scolding away until the Chimpanzee could scarcely hear the sound of its own voice.

"Oh, no," said the small Orang-Utang, who was a kind-hearted little fellow, "they are very foolish, but I shouldn't say they were as bad as that!"

"Well, no, perhaps not," said the Chimpanzee.

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS AND THE RHINOCEROS

Anonymous

"Ugh!" grunted the big Hippopotamus. "I think I shall have a bath. Oh, dear me, I feel so sleepy!" And he opened his mouth and gave a tremendous yawn.

"Well!" said a deep, gruff voice from the other side of the railings. "Well! If I had a mouth as large and as ugly as that I would keep it shut, at any rate."

It was the Rhinoceros, next door. The Hippopotamus and he didn't get on very well together; indeed, they were always quarreling, so that it was just as well that there were bars between them.

The Hippopotamus turned round angrily. "Ugly?" he said. "Who are you calling ugly? I am sure I'm just as pretty as you are, with that great horn sticking out of your nose. I don't think it looks at all nice."

"H'm!" said the Rhinoceros. "I don't care if it doesn't. It's been very useful to me, all the same."

"Well," returned the Hippopotamus, "and so has my mouth, so there! If it had been any smaller, I shouldn't have been able to get it round, for it was rather a large boat."

"Whatever are you talking about?" demanded the Rhinoceros. "Look here! Let's stop quarreling for a bit, and you shall tell me your story and I'll tell you mine. Fire away!"

"Ah, that's just what the men did," said the Hippopotamus. "We were all swimming in the river, when they came down in their boat. It was what they call a canoe (so the Flamingoes told me), and most of the men in it were black; but there was one white man who had a curious stick in his hand, which he every now and then would point at some bird or animal, and then he made tire come out of the stick, and the bird or animal generally got hurt.

"I lay in the water watching them, when, all at once, the white man pointed his stick at my brother, and before you could say 'crocodile,' my brother was floating away down the stream with a bullet in his head. The men in the boat paddled away after him, but that was more than I could stand, so I went after them. I saw the white man point his stick at me, but I dived in time and came up just beside them; then it was that my mouth came in so handy. I just opened it quite wide and then I closed it again, and, well, somehow the boat was upset and the men were all kicking about in the water, splashing and shouting and making no end of a fuss. But I let them go that time, I only wanted to give them a lesson. Now, it's your turn. How did your horn come in useful?"

"Oh, my adventure was on land, of course," said the Rhinoceros, who had been much interested in the Hippo's story. "I was snoozing, one afternoon, at home, when I heard a curious noise, and I saw some of those black men you talked about, followed by a white one on a horse. Well, before I had time to do or say anything, the white man pointed his gun at me (that's what they call the stick that the fire comes out of), and the next moment I felt a bullet knock against my side. Of course, it didn't hurt me—that's the advantage of having a skin like mine; but it made me very angry. So I just got up and ran at the gentleman of the horse; he was very much surprised, and so was the horse, especially when I gave him a prod with this horn of mine. He turned right round and galloped away as fast as he could go, with the black men after him. Of course, I didn't take the trouble to run after them. But, you see, my horn does come in useful sometimes."

"Ugh!" grunted the Hippopotamus. "I suppose it does. But it isn't pretty, all the same."

"Well, anyway it's better than your mouth," replied the Rhinoceros, getting angry again.

"But I can swim!" said the Hippopotamus.

"But you haven't got such a tough skin as I have," replied the Rhinoceros. And they went on quarreling until the keeper came with their dinner.

THE GIRAFFE

Anonymous

I am a Giraffe and my name is Daisy. I come from a hot country a long way off, called Africa; I am quite grown up now and shall not get any bigger. Don't you think I am big enough as I am? I do. There is no other animal which is as tall as I am; I am taller than the Elephant or the Camel, but of course I am not as strong as the Elephant is.

You need not be at all afraid of me, because I will not hurt you. No, thank you, I do not want to eat you up at all; I should not like to eat little boys and girls; indeed, I don't think I could if I tried, and I am sure I do not want to try. I eat leaves and grass and hay and things like that; I can reach the leaves of the trees because I have such a long neck.

One day a lady came to see me here and she had some very nice-looking green things on the top of her head, and I thought that I would like to eat them as they looked so nice; so I just bent my head over the top of the bars of my cage and took a bite at them. But they were not at all nice, really, and the lady made such a fuss! She thought I was going to eat her up, I believe. I heard afterwards that the things I had eaten were the flowers on her hat, and they were not real flowers at all. I don't think people ought to have such things in their hats if they don't want us to eat them. Of course, I thought the lady had brought them on purpose for me, so I didn't see why I shouldn't eat them. But I don't think that lady will come quite close to my cage again.

I lived here alone for quite a long time, because they would not get a playmate for me. You see, there are not nearly so many of my family now as there used to be, and then we don't like traveling over the sea at all. But now I have a playmate and he is a very nice little chap; of course he is not as fine and big as I am, but he will grow up in time and I shall be very glad to have some company. I can really run quite fast when I have room, but here there isn't room enough; and I don't very much mind, because I'm quite content to walk about gently, thank you. And then I have to take great care of my health, you know, because I'm rather delicate and not like the Ostrich, who seems to be able to eat almost anything. Why, he tells me that he is very fond of rusty nails, and as for pennies he considers them most delicious. It's a very funny sort of taste, I think. No, it's no good for you to offer me nuts, thank you, because I couldn't crack them.

My horns, were you asking about? We all have horns, both gentlemen and lady Giraffes, but they are always quite small, like mine. They're not much use to us, you know, for when we want to fight any one we use our feet—we can give very strong kicks with our fore-feet, if we like. But, on the whole, we don't like fighting; we find that it's much safer to run away—you see, we can run so fast that there are not many creatures who can catch us.

I am, as I have said, very particular about my food, and I don't like thorns or thistles, so when I come across a plant with prickly thorns on it, I carefully pick off the leaves with my tongue and leave the thorns behind. I don't believe you could do that with your tongue, but mine is a very useful tongue, and I shouldn't like to change it with anybody. I sometimes find it rather awkward to get anything on the ground, which is just between my front feet; I have to put my legs very wide apart, and then bend down my neck, like this. I suppose it does look rather funny, so I don't mind if you do laugh at me. But then, you know, you look just as funny to me, with your very small legs and no neck at all to speak of, and no horns and no tail; I sometimes wonder how you can get on at all.

I come of a very old family, you know; I believe that you men have known about me for a very long time.

If you will excuse me now, I think I will go in, as I am rather afraid of catching cold; it wouldn't do for me to get a sore throat or a stiff neck, would it? Good-by I I'm so pleased to have met you.

PARROTS

Anonymous

Outside the Parrot-house there was a terrible noise; a screaming, squawking, shouting, and crying, just as if the whole place were on fire, or every Parrot were being killed.

The Macaws were sitting on their little perches out in the open air. They were very proud of themselves, for they greatly enjoyed being outside on a sunny, warm day; it was much better than being in a cage, inside the house. They were all very fine birds; some had blue heads and yellow bodies and green tails; others had red heads and yellow tails; there were one or two who were quite white, but they each one thought that he was a very fine fellow, and they all shouted and screamed and squawked at the top of their voices.

And what was it all about? The greatest noise seemed to be going on round one perch, where a big Macaw, with a blue and green head, was talking very loud and very fast to a group of other birds close by, and he seemed to be very angry about something. In one claw he held a large apple, and if you had been near enough, you would have seen that some one had evidently taken a big bite out of it. This was what was making all the bother. Mr. Green-and-Blue-Head kept shouting out: "Who bit my apple? Who bit my apple? I won't have it! I won't stand it! It's too bad! It was all right this morning! I believe it was you that did it!" (this was said to a white Cockatoo). "Oh, you bad, wicked bird! What will become of you? Oh, you bad thing! Go along, do! Who bit my apple?"

But the white Cockatoo began to scream at once. "'Oh, I didn't!" he said. "How dare you say such a thing? Bite your apple, indeed! I wouldn't do it. Don't call me names, because I won't have it. I'll peck you, you bad bird! Who are you telling to get along? Bite your apple, indeed! Squaw-aw-aw-aw-awk-k-k!"

Then a little, green Love Bird began to try to make peace. "It doesn't matter very much, does it, Mr. Macaw?" she said. "It's not a very big bite, though, of course, it must be very vexing. But I'm sure Mr. Cockatoo didn't do it, if he says he didn't. But, please, don't let us have any pecking. You'll find out, sometime, who did it, I dare say."

"Oh, that's all very well for you," returned the Macaw, "but it isn't your apple. Who bit my apple? Who bit my apple? You'd better tell me, at once, whoever it was, and then, perhaps, I shan't be quite so angry."

"Oh, do be quiet about your apple," put in another Macaw, with a bright, red head. "Who cares about your apple? Why don't you enjoy yourself out in the sun? I declare it quite makes me think of my young days, sitting out here."

"Apple? Apple? Who said apple?" shouted another bird from the end of the row. "Give me a bit! Give poor Polly a bit! Poor old Polly! Pretty Poll! Give me a bit; don't be greedy! Who's got the apple?"

Then four or five others all began at once: "No, no, I want a bit! I asked first! I want some, too! Over here! No, here you are! This way with the apple! Hurry up! Be quick! Where's that apple?"

Just then a lady and a little girl and a little boy came along past where the Parrots were sitting. Instantly all the birds began to chatter and scream louder than ever.

"Look, look at them!" they called out. "Did you ever see anything so absurd? Where are their feathers? What ridiculous beaks! I don't believe they could crack nuts, if they tried ever so hard. They haven't got any wings. Oh, how funny! Ha, ha, ha! Go away, do, you ugly creatures!"

The little girl and boy and the lady didn't understand what they were saying, of course. But the lady said: "Come along quickly, children, and let us get past these noisy birds; they quite give me a headache with their screaming."

"Well, did you ever!" said the Parrots. "Calling us noisy birds! I'm sure we're not noisy. They haven't got green heads and red tails; I don't see what they think so much of themselves for! Well, I'm glad they've gone! If they'd come near me, I'd have given them a bite! Silly things! Squawk-k-k!"

The Macaw with the apple was still very sad. No one took any notice of him, and no one would tell him who had bitten his precious apple. All at once, it slipped out of his claw and fell on to the ground. He tried to reach it, but the chain which tied him to his perch was not long enough, and he couldn't get it. All the other Parrots began to scream with laughter at him; they danced up and down and flapped their wings and shouted, and made more noise than ever. Then some Sparrows flew down and began to peck at the apple, and this made the Macaw angrier than ever.

"H'm!" said one little Sparrow, looking up at the Macaw, with a twinkle in his eye; "quite a good apple! I wonder that you threw it away. Who's been biting it?"

The Macaw screamed and scolded, but it was no good. If he hadn't talked so much, he might have eaten his apple in peace. Now, he had lost it altogether.

And he never found out who bit his apple.

RAB AND HIS FRIENDS

By John Brown, M.D.

Four and thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary street from the high school, our heads together, and our arms intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how or why.

When we got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a crowd at the Tron-church. "A dog fight!" shouted Bob, and was off; and so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before we got up! And is not this boy nature! and human nature, too? and don't we all wish a house on fire not to be out before we see it? Dogs like fighting; old Isaac says they "delight" in it, and for the best of all reasons; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight. They see three of the great cardinal virtues of dog or man—courage, endurance, and skill—in intense action. This is very different from a love of making dogs fight, and enjoying, and aggravating, and making gain by their pluck. A boy—be he ever so fond himself of fighting, if he be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would have run off with Bob and me fast enough; it is a natural, and a not wicked, interest that all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in action.

Does any curious and finely-ignorant woman wish to know how Bob's eye at a glance announced a dog-fight to his brain? He did not, he could not see the dogs fighting; it was a flash of an inference, a rapid induction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting, is a crowd masculine mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate woman, fluttering wildly round the outside, and using her tongue and her hands freely upon the men, as so many "brutes"; it is a crowd annular, compact and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes and its heads all bent downward and inward, to one common focus.

Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over; a small thoroughbred, white bull-terrier, is busy throttling a large shepherd's dog, unaccustomed to war, but not to be trifled with. They are hard at it; the scientific little fellow doing his work in great style, his pastoral enemy fighting wildly, but with the sharpest of teeth and a great courage. Science and breeding, however, soon had their own; the Game Chicken, as the premature Bob called him, working his way up, took his final grip of poor Yarrow's throat—and he lay gasping and done for. His master, a brown, handsome, big young shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would have liked to have knocked down any man, would "drink up Esil, or eat a crocodile," for that part, if he had a chance; it was no use kicking the little dog; that would only make him hold the closer. Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls, of the best possible ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near, and many cried for it who might have got it from the well at Blackfriars Wynd. "Bite the tail!" and a large, vague, benevolent, middle aged man, more desirous than wise, with some struggle got the bushy end of Yarrow's tail into his ample mouth, and bit it with all his might. This was more than enough for the much-enduring, much-perspiring shepherd, who, with a gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered a terrific facer upon our large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged friend—who went down like a shot.

Still the Chicken holds; death not far off. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" observed a calm, highly-dressed young buck, with an eye-glass in his eye. "Snuff, indeed!" growled the angry crowd, affronted and glaring. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" again observes the buck, but with more urgency; whereupon were produced several open boxes, and from a mull which may have been at Culloden, he took a pinch, knelt down, and presented it to the nose of the Chicken. The laws of physiology and of snuff take their course; the Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free.

The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his arms—comforting him.

But the bull-terrier's blood is up, and his soul unsatisfied; he grips the first dog he meets, and discovering she is not a dog, in Homeric phrase, he makes a brief sort of amende, and is off. The boys, with Bob and me at their head, are after him; down Niddry street he goes, bent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an arrow—Bob and I, and our small men, panting behind.

There, under the single arch of the South bridge is a huge mastiff, sauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in his pockets; he is old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland bull, and has the Shakespearian dewlaps shaking as he goes.

The Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens on his throat. To our astonishment, the great creature does nothing but stand still, hold himself up, and roar—yes, roar; a long, serious, remonstrative roar. How is this? Bob and I are up to them. He is muzzled! The bailies had proclaimed a general muzzling, and his master, studying strength and economy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in a home-made apparatus, constructed out of the leather of some ancient breechin. His mouth was open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage—a sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap across his mouth tense as a bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation and surprise; his roar asking us all round, "Did you ever see the like of this?"

He looked a statue of anger and astonishment, done in Aberdeen granite.

We soon had a crowd; the Chicken held on. "A knife!" cried Bob; and a cobbler gave him his knife; you know the kind of knife, worn away obliquely to a point, and always keen. I put its edge to the tense leather; it ran before it; and then!—one sudden jerk of that enormous head, a sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise, and the bright and fierce little fellow is dropped, limp, and dead. A solemn pause; this was more than any of us had bargained for. I turned the little fellow over, and saw he was quite dead; the mastiff had taken him by the small of the back, like a rat, and broken it.

He looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed and amazed; snuffed him all over, stared at him, and taking a sudden thought, turned round and trotted off. Bob took the dead dog up, and said, "John, we'll bury him after tea." "Yes," said I, and was off after the mastiff. He made up the Cowgate at a rapid swing; he had forgotten some engagement. He turned up the Candlemaker Row, and stopped at the Harrow Inn.

There was a carrier's cart ready to start, and a keen, thin, impatient, black-a-vised little man, his hand at his gray horse's head looking about angrily for something. "Rab, ye thief!" said he, aiming a kick at my great friend, who drew cringing up, and avoiding the heavy shoe with more agility than dignity, and watching his master's eye, slunk dismayed under the cart—his ears down, and as much as he had of tail down, too.

What a man this must be—thought I—to whom my tremendous hero turns tail! The carrier saw the muzzle hanging, cut and useless, from his neck, and I eagerly told him the story which Bob and I always thought, and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter, alone were worthy to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and condescended to say, "Rab, ma man, puir Rabbie" —whereupon the stump of a tail rose up, the ears were cocked, the eyes filled, and were comforted; the two friends were reconciled. "Hupp!" and a stroke of the whip were given to Jess; and off went the three.

Bob and I buried the Game Chicken that night (we had not much of a tea) in the back-green of his house in Melville street, No. 17, with considerable gravity and silence; and being at the time in the Iliad, and, like all boys, Trojans, we called him Hector of course.

* * * * *

Six years have passed—a long time for a boy and a dog: Bob Ainslie is off to the wars; I am a medical student, and clerk at Minto House Hospital.

Rab I saw almost every week, on the Wednesday; and we had much pleasant intimacy. I found the way to his heart by frequent scratching of his huge head, and an occasional bone. When I did not notice him he would plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that bud of a tail, and looking up, with his head a little to the one side. His master I occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic as any Spartan.

One fine October afternoon, I was leaving the hospital, when I saw the large gate open, and in walked Rab with that great and easy saunter of his. He looked as if taking general possession of the place; like the Duke of Wellington entering a subdued city, satiated with victory and peace. After him came Jess, now white from age, with her cart; and in it a woman, carefully wrapped up—the carrier leading the horse anxiously, and looking back. When he saw me, James (for his name was James Noble) made a curt and grotesque "boo," and said, "Maister John, this is the mistress; she's got a trouble in her breest—some kind of an income we're thinkin'."

By this time I saw the woman's face; she was sitting on a sack filled with straw, her husband's plaid round her, and his big-coat, with its large white metal buttons, over her feet.

I never saw a more unforgettable face—pale, serious, lonely, delicate, sweet, without being at all what we call fine. She looked sixty, and had on a mutch, white as snow, with its black ribbon; her silvery, smooth hair setting off her dark-gray eyes—eyes such as one sees only twice or thrice in a lifetime, full of suffering, full also of the overcoming of it; her eyebrows black and delicate, and her mouth firm, patient, and contented, which few mouths ever are.

As I have said, I never saw a more beautiful countenance, or a more subdued or settled quiet. "Ailie," said James, "this is Maister John, the young doctor; Rab's freend, ye ken. We often speak aboot you, doctor." She smiled, and made a movement, but said nothing; and prepared to come down, putting her plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all his glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at his palace gate, he could not have done it more daintily, more tenderly, more like a gentleman, than did James the Howgate carrier, when he lifted down Ailie, his wife.

The contrast of his small, swarthy, weather-beaten, keen, worldly face to hers—pale, subdued, and beautiful—was something wonderful. Rab looked on concerned and puzzled, but ready for anything that might turn up—were it to strangle the nurse, the porter, or even me. Ailie and he seemed great friends.

"As I was sayin', she's got a kind o' trouble in her breest, doctor; wull ye tak' a look at it?" We walked into the consulting-room, all four; Rab grim and comic, willing to be happy and confidential if cause could be shown, willing also to be the reverse on the same terms. Ailie sat down, undid her open gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck, and, without a word, showed me her right breast. I looked at and examined it carefully, she and James watching me, and Rab eying all three. What could I say? There it was that had once been so soft, so shapely, so white, so gracious and bountiful, so "full of all blessed conditions"—hard as a stone, a centre of horrid pain, making that pale face, with its gray, lucid, reasonable eyes, and its sweet resolved mouth, express the full measure of suffering overcome. Why was that gentle, modest, sweet woman, clean and lovable, condemned by God to bear such a burden?

I got her away to bed. "May Rab and me bide?" said James. "You may; and Rab, if he will behave himself." "I'se warrant he's do that, doctor;" and in slunk the faithful beast. I wish you could have seen him. There are no such dogs now. He belonged to a lost tribe. As I have said, he was brindled, and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thickset, like a little bull—a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two—being all he had—gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's father's; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, and in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear, which was forever unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be long, being as broad as long—the mobility, the instantaneousness of that bud were very funny and surprising, and its expressive twinklings and winkings, the intercommunications between the eye, the ear, and it, were of the oddest and swiftest.

Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great size; and having fought his way all along the road to absolute supremacy, he was as mighty in his own line as Julius Caesar or the Duke of Wellington, and had the gravity of all great fighters.

You must have often observed the likeness of certain men to certain animals, and of certain dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab without thinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller. The same large, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, honest countenance, the same deep inevitable eye, the same look—as of thunder asleep, but ready—neither a dog nor a man to be trifled with.

Next day, my master, the surgeon, examined Ailie. There was no doubt it must kill her, and soon. It could be removed—it might never return—it would give her speedy relief—she should have it done. She curtsied, looked at James, and said, "When?" "To-morrow," said the kind surgeon—a man of few words. She and James and Rab and I retired. I noticed that he and she spoke a little, but seemed to anticipate everything in each other. The following day at noon, the students came in, hurrying up the great stair. At the first landing-place, on a small well-known blackboard, was a bit of paper fastened by wafers and many remains of old wafers beside it. On the paper were the words—"An operation to-day. J. B., Clerk"

Up ran the youths, eager to secure good places; in they crowded, full of interest and talk. "What's the case? Which side is it?"

Don't think them heartless; they are neither better nor worse than you or I; they get over their professional horrors, and into their proper work', and in them pity—as an emotion, ending in itself or at best in tears and a long-drawn breath, lessens, while pity as a motive, is quickened, and gains power and purpose. It is well for poor human nature that it is so.

The operating theatre is crowded; much talk and fun, and all the cordiality and stir of youth. The surgeon with his staff of assistants is there. In comes Ailie; one look at her quiets and abates the eager students. The beautiful old woman is too much for them. They sit down, and are dumb, and gaze at her. These rough boys feel the power of her presence. She walks in quickly, but without haste; dressed in her mutch, her neckerchief, her white dimity short-gown, her black bombazine petticoat, showing her white worsted stockings and her carpet-shoes. Behind her was James with Rab. James sat down in the distance, and took that huge and noble head between his knees. Rab looked perplexed and dangerous; forever cocking his ear and dropping it as fast.

Ailie stepped up on a seat, and laid herself on the table, as her friend the surgeon told her; arranged herself, gave a rapid look at James, shut her eyes, rested herself on me, and took my hand. The operation was at once begun; it was necessarily slow; and chloroform—one of God's best gifts to his suffering children—was then unknown. The surgeon did his work. The pale face showed its pain, but was still and silent. Rab's soul was working within him; he saw that something strange was going on—blood flowing from his mistress, and she suffering; his ragged ear was up, and importunate; he growled and gave now and then a sharp impatient yelp; he would have liked to have done something to that man. But James had him firm, and gave him a glower (Scotch word—a hard stare) from time to time, and an intimation of a possible kick;—all the better for James, it kept his eye and his mind off Ailie.

It is over; she is dressed, steps gently and decently down from the table, looks for James; then turning to the surgeon and the students, she curtsies—and in a low, clear voice, begs their pardon if she has behaved ill. The students—all of us—wept like children; the surgeon wrapped her up carefully—and resting on James and me, Ailie went to her room, Rab following. We put her to bed. James took off his heavy shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt and toe-capt, and put them carefully under the table, saying, "Maister John, I'm for nane o' yer strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang aboot on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." And so he did; and handy and clever, and swift and tender as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave her; he seldom slept; and often I saw his small, shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her. As before, they spoke little.

Rab behaved well, never moving, showing us how meek and gentle he could be, and occasionally, in his sleep, letting us know that he was demolishing some adversary. He took a walk with me every day, generally to the Candlemaker Row; but he was sombre and mild; declined doing battle, though some fit cases offered, and indeed submitted to sundry indignities; and was always very ready to turn and came faster back, and trotted up the stair with much lightness, and went straight to that door.

Jess, the mare, had been sent, with her weatherworn cart, to Howgate, and had doubtless her own dim and placid meditations and confusions, on the absence of her master and Rab, and her unnatural freedom from the road and her cart.

For some days Ailie did well. The wound healed "by the first intention"; for as James said, "Oor Ailie's skin's ower clean to beil." The students came in quiet and anxious, and surrounded her bed. She said she liked to see their young, honest faces. The surgeon dressed her, and spoke to her in his own short, kind way, pitying her through his eyes, Rab and James outside the circle—Rab being now reconciled, and even cordial, and having made up his mind that as yet nobody required worrying, but as you may suppose semper paratus.

So far well; but four days after the operation my patient had a sudden and long shivering, a "groosin'," as she called it. I saw her soon after; her eyes were too bright, her cheek colored; she was restless, and ashamed of being so; the balance was lost; mischief had begun. On looking at the wound, a blush of red told the secret; her pulse was rapid, her breathing anxious and quick, she wasn't herself, as she said, and was vexed at her restlessness. We tried what we could, James did everything, was everywhere; never in the way, never out of it. Rab subsided under the table into a dark place, and was motionless, all but his eye, which followed every one. Ailie got worse; began to wander in her mind, gently; was more demonstrative in her ways to James, rapid in her questions, and sharp at times. He was vexed, and said, "She was never that way afore; no, never." For a time she knew her head was wrong, and was always asking our pardon—the dear, gentle old woman; then delirium set in strong, without pause. Her brain gave way, and then came that terrible spectacle.

"The intellectual power, through words and things, Went sounding on its dim and perilous way;"

she sang bits of old songs and psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling the Psalms of David, and the diviner words of his Son and Lord, with homely odds and ends and scraps of ballads.

Nothing more touching, or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did I ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch voice—the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the bright and perilous eye; some wild words, some household cares, something for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in a "fremyt" (querulous, trembling) voice, and he starting up, surprised, and slinking off as if he were to blame somehow, or had been dreaming he heard. Many eager questions and beseechings which James and I could make nothing of, and on which she seemed to set her all, and then sink back ununderstood. It was very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad. James hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read to her, when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and doating over her as his "ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" "Ma ain bonnie wee dawtie!"

The end was drawing on: the golden bowl was breaking; the silver cord was fast being loosed—that animula blandula, vagula, hospes, comesque (dear fleeting life, a sojourner and companion) was about to flee. The body and the soul—companions for sixty years—were being sundered, and taking leave. She was walking, alone, through the valley of that shadow, into which one day we must all enter—and yet she was not alone, for we know whose rod and staff were comforting her.

One night she had fallen quiet, and as we hoped, asleep; her eyes were shut. We put down the gas and sat watching her. Suddenly she sat up in bed and taking a bedgown which was lying on it rolled up, she held it eagerly to her breast—to the right side. We could see her eyes bright with surpassing tenderness and joy, bending over this bundle of clothes. She held it as a woman holds her suckling child; opening out her nightgown impatiently, and holding it close, and brooding over it, and murmuring foolish little words, as one whom his mother comforteth, and who sucks and is satisfied. It was pitiful and strange to see her wasting dying look, keen and yet vague—her immense love.

"Preserve me!" groaned James, giving away. And then she rocked back and forward, as if to make it sleep, hushing it, and wasting on it her infinite fondness. "Wae's me, doctor; I declare she's thinkin' it's that bairn." "What bairn?"

"The only bairn we ever had; our wee Mysie, and she's in the Kingdom, forty years and mair." It was plainly true: the pain in the breast telling its urgent story to a bewildered, ruined brain, was misread and mistaken; it suggested to her the uneasiness of a breast full of milk, and then the child; and so again once more they were together, and she had her ain wee Mysie in her bosom.

This was the close. She sank rapidly: the delirium left her; but, as she whispered, she was "clean silly"; it was the lightening before the final darkness. After having for some time lain still—her eyes shut, she said, "James!" He came close to her, and lifting up her calm, clear, beautiful eyes, she gave him a long look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked for Rab but could not see him, then turned to her husband again, as if she would never leave off looking, shut her eyes and composed herself. She lay for some time breathing quick, and passed away so gently, that when we thought she was gone, James, in his old-fashioned way, held the mirror to her face. After a long pause, one small spot of dimness was breathed out; it vanished away, and never returned, leaving the blank clear darkness of the mirror without a stain. "What is your life? it is even a vapor, which appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

Rab all this time had been full awake and motionless; he came forward beside us; Ailie's hand, which James had held, was hanging down; it was soaked with his tears; Rab licked it all over carefully, looked at her, and returned to his place under the table.

James and I sat, I don't know how long, but for some time—saying nothing: he started up abruptly, and with some noise went to the table, and putting his right, fore and middle fingers each into a shoe, pulled them out, and put them on, breaking one of the leather latchets, and muttering in anger, "I never did the like o' that afore."

I believe he never did; nor after either. "Rab!" he said roughly, and pointing with his thumb to the bottom of the bed. Rab leaped up, and settled himself; his head and eye to the dead face. "Maister John, ye'll wait for me," said the carrier, and disappeared in the darkness, thundering downstairs in his heavy shoes. I ran to a front window: there he was, already round the house, and out at the gate fleeing like a shadow.

I was afraid about him, and yet not afraid; so I sat down beside Rab, and being wearied, fell asleep. I awoke from a sudden noise outside. It was November, and there had been a heavy fall of snow. Rab was in statu quo (in the same place); he heard the noise, too, and plainly knew it, but never moved. I looked out, and there, at the gate, in the dim morning—for the sun was not up—was Jess and the cart—a cloud of steam rising from the old mare. I did not see James; he was already at the door, and came up to the stairs, and met me. It was less than three hours since he left, and he must have posted out—who knows how—to Howgate, full nine miles off; yoked Jess, and driven her astonished into town. He had an armful of blankets, and was streaming with perspiration. He nodded to me, spread out on the floor two pairs of clean old blankets, having at their corners "A. G., 1794," in large letters in red worsted. These were the initials of Alison Grame, and James may have looked in at her from without—himself unseen but not unthought of—when he was "wat, wat and weary," and after having walked many a mile over the hills, may have seen her sitting, while "a' the lave were sleepin';" and by the firelight working her name on the blankets, for her ain James' bed.

He motioned Rab down, and taking his wife in his arms, laid her in the blankets, and wapped her carefully and firmly up, leaving the face uncovered; and then lifting her, he nodded again sharply to me, and with a resolved but utterly miserable face, strode along the passage, and downstairs, followed by Rab. I followed with a light; but he didn't need it. I went out, holding stupidly the candle in my hand in the calm frosty air; we were soon at the gate. I could have helped him, but I saw he was not to be meddled with, and he was strong, and did not need it. He laid her down as tenderly, as safely, as he had lifted her out ten days before—as tenderly as when he had her first in his arms when she was only "A. G."—sorted her, leaving that beautiful sealed face open to the heavens; and then taking Jess by the head, he moved away. He did not notice me, neither did Rab, who presided behind the cart.

I stood till they passed through the long shadow of the College, and turned up Nicholson street. I heard the solitary cart sound through the streets, and die away and come again; and I returned, thinking of that company going up Libberton Brae, then along Roslin Muir, the morning light touching the Pentlands and making them on-looking ghosts; then down the hill through Auchindinny woods, past "haunted Woodhouselee"; and as daybreak came sweeping up the bleak Lammermuirs, and fell on his own door, the company would stop, and James would take the key, and lift Ailie up again, laying her on her own bed, and, having put Jess up, would return with Rab and shut the door.

James buried his wife, with his neighbors mourning, Rab inspecting the solemnity from a distance. It was snow, and that black ragged hole would look strange in the midst of the swelling spotless cushion of white. James looked after everything; then rather suddenly fell ill, and took to bed; was insensible when the doctor came, and soon died. A sort of low fever was prevailing in the village, and his want of sleep, his exhaustion, and his misery, made him apt to take it. The grave was not difficult to reopen. A fresh fall of snow had again made all things white and smooth; Rab once more looked on, and slunk home to the stable.

And what of Rab? I asked for him next week of the new carrier who got the goodwill of James's business, and was now master of Jess and her cart. "How's Rab?" He put me off, and said rather rudely, "What's your business wi' the dowg?" I was not to be so put off. "Where's Rab?" He, getting confused and red, and intermeddling with his hair, said, "'Deed sir, Rab's died." "Dead! what did he die of?" "Weel, sir," said he, getting redder, "he didna exactly dee; he was killed. I had to brain him wi' a rack-pin; there was nae doing wi' him. He lay in the treviss wi' the mear, and wadna come oot. I tempit him wi' the kail and meat, but he wad tak naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the beast, and he was aye gur gurrin', and grup gruppin' me by the legs. I was laith to make awa wi' the old dowg, his like wasne atween this and Thornhill—but, 'deed, sir, I could do naething else." I believed him. Fit end for Rab, quick and complete. His teeth and his friends gone, why should he keep the peace and be civil?

A RIDE WITH A MAD HORSE A FREIGHT-CAR

By W.H.H. Murray

It was at the battle of Malvern Hill—a battle where the carnage was more frightful, as it seems to me, than in any this side of the Alleghanies during the whole war—that my story must begin. I was then serving as Major in the —th Massachusetts Regiment—the old—th, as we used to call it—and a bloody time the boys had of it too. About 2 P.M. we had been sent out to skirmish along the edge of the wood in which, as our generals suspected, the Rebs lay massing for a charge across the slope, upon the crest of which our army was posted. We had barely entered the underbrush when we met the heavy formations of Magruder in the very act of charging. Of course, our thin line of skirmishers was no impediment to those onrushing masses. They were on us and over us before we could get out of the way. I do not think that half of those running, screaming masses of men ever knew that they had passed over the remnants of as plucky a regiment as ever came out of the old Bay State. But many of the boys had good reason to remember that afternoon at the base of Malvern Hill, and I among the number: for when the last line of Rebs had passed over me, I was left among the bushes with the breath nearly trampled out of me and an ugly bayonet-gash through my thigh; and mighty little consolation it for me at that moment to see the fellow who ran me through lying stark dead at my side, with a bullet-hole in his head, his shock of coarse black hair matted with blood, and his stony eyes looking into mine. Well, I bandaged up my limb the best I might and started to crawl away, for our batteries had opened, and the grape and canister that came hurtling down the slope passed but a few feet over my head. It was slow and painful work, as you can imagine, but at last, by dint of perseverance, I had dragged myself away to the left of the direct range of the batteries, and, creeping to the verge of the wood, looked off over the green slope. I understood by the crash and roar of the guns, the yells and cheers of the men, and that hoarse murmur which those who have been in battle know, but which I cannot describe in words, that there was hot work going on out there; but never have I seen, no, not in that three days' desperate melee at the Wilderness, nor at that terrific repulse we had at Cold Harbor, such absolute slaughter as I saw that afternoon on the green slope of Malvern Hill. The guns of the entire army were massed on the crest, and thirty thousand of our infantry lay, musket in hand, in front. For eight hundred yards the hill sank in easy declension to the wood, and across this smooth expanse the Rebs must charge to reach our lines. It was nothing short of downright insanity to order men to charge that hill; and so his generals told Lee, but he would not listen to reason that day, and so he sent regiment after regiment, and brigade after brigade, and division after division, to certain death. Talk about Grant's disregard of human life, his effort at Cold Harbor—and I ought to know, for I got a Minie in my shoulder that day—was hopeful and easy work to what Lee laid on Hill's and Magruder's divisions at Malvern. It was at the close of the second charge, when the yelling mass reeled back from before the blaze of those sixty guns and thirty thousand rifles, even as they began to break and fly backward toward the woods, that I saw from the spot where I lay a riderless horse break out of the confused and flying mass, and, with mane and tail erect and spreading nostril, come dashing obliquely down the slope. Over fallen steeds and heaps of the dead she leaped with a motion as airy as that of the flying fox when, fresh and unjaded, he leads away from the hounds, whose sudden cry has broken him off from hunting mice amid the bogs of the meadow. So this riderless horse came vaulting along. Now from my earliest boyhood I have had what horsemen call a 'weakness' for horses. Only give me a colt of wild, irregular temper and fierce blood to tame, and I am perfectly happy. Never did lash of mine, singing with cruel sound through the air, fall on such a colt's soft hide. Never did yell or kick send his hot blood from heart to head deluging his sensitive brain with fiery currents, driving him into frenzy or blinding him with fear; but touches, soft and gentle as a woman's, caressing words, and oats given from the open palm, and unfailing kindness, were the means I used to 'subjugate' him. Sweet subjugation, both to him who subdues and to him who yields! The wild, unmannerly, and unmanageable colt, the fear of horsemen the country round, finding in you not an enemy, but a friend, receiving his daily food from you, and all those little 'nothings' which go as far with a horse as a woman, to win and retain affection, grows to look upon you as his protector and friend, and testifies in countless ways his fondness for you. So when I saw this horse, with action so free and motion so graceful, amid that storm of bullets, my heart involuntarily went out to her, and my feelings rose higher and higher at every leap she took from amid the whirlwind of fire and lead. And as she plunged at last over a little hillock out of range and came careering toward me as only a riderless horse might come, her head flung wildly from side to side, her nostrils widely spread, her flank and shoulders flecked with foam, her eye dilating, I forgot my wound and all the wild roar of battle, and, lifting myself involuntarily to a sitting posture as she swept grandly by, gave her a ringing cheer.

"Perhaps in the sound of a human voice of happy mood amid the awful din she recognized a resemblance to the voice of him whose blood moistened her shoulders and was even yet dripping from saddle and housings. Be that as it may, no sooner had my voice sounded than she flung her head with a proud upward movement into the air, swerved sharply to the left, neighed as she might to a master at morning from her stall, and came trotting directly up to where I lay, and, pausing, looked down upon me as it were in compassion. I spoke again, and stretched out my hand caressingly. She pricked her ears, took a step forward and lowered her nose until it came in contact with my palm. Never did I fondle anything more tenderly, never did I see an animal which seemed to so court and appreciate human tenderness as that beautiful mare. I say 'beautiful.' No other word might describe her. Never will her image fade from my memory while memory lasts.

"In weight she might have turned, when well conditioned, nine hundred and fifty pounds. In color she was a dark chestnut, with a velvety depth and soft look about the hair indescribably rich and elegant. Many a time have I heard ladies dispute the shade and hue of her plush-like coat as they ran their white, jeweled fingers through her silken hair. Her body was round in the barrel and perfectly symmetrical. She was wide in the haunches, without projection of the hip bones, upon which the shorter ribs seemed to lap. High in the withers as she was, the line of her back and neck perfectly curved, while her deep, oblique shoulders and long, thick forearm, ridgy with swelling sinews, suggested the perfection of stride and power. Her knees across the pan were wide, the cannon-bone below them short and thin; the pasterns long and sloping; her hoofs round, dark, shiny, and well set on. Her mane was a shade darker than her coat, fine and thin, as a thoroughbred's always is whose blood is without taint or cross. Her ear was thin, sharply pointed, delicately curved, nearly black around the borders, and as tremulous as the leaves of an aspen. Her neck rose from the withers to the head in perfect curvature, hard, devoid of fat, and well cut up under the chops. Her nostrils were full, very full, and thin almost as parchment. The eyes, from which tears might fall or fire flash, were well brought out, soft as a gazelle's, almost human in their intelligence, while over the small bony head, over neck and shoulders, yea, over the whole body and clean down to the hoofs, the veins stood out as if the skin were but tissue-paper against which the warm blood pressed, and which it might at any moment burst asunder. 'A perfect animal,' I said to myself as I lay looking her over—'an animal which might have been born from the wind and the sunshine, so cheerful and so swift she seems; an animal which a man would present as his choicest gift to the woman he loved, and yet one which that woman, wife or lady-love, would give him to ride when honor and life depended on bottom and speed.'

"All that afternoon the beautiful mare stood over me, while away to the right of us the hoarse tide of battle flowed and ebbed. What charm, what delusion of memory held her there? Was my face to her as the face of her dead master, sleeping a sleep from which not even the wildest roar of battle, no, nor her cheerful neigh at morning, would ever wake him? Or is there in animals some instinct, answering to our intuition, only more potent, which tells them whom to trust and whom to avoid? I know not, and yet some such sense they may have, they must have; or else why should this mare so fearlessly attach herself to me? By what process of reason or instinct I know not, but there she chose me for her master; for when some of my men at dusk came searching, and found me, and, laying me on a stretcher, started toward our lines, the mare, uncompelled, of her own free will, followed at my side; and all through that stormy night of wind and rain, as my men struggled along through the mud and mire toward Harrison's Landing, the mare followed, and ever after, until she died, was with me, and was mine, and I, so far as man might be, was hers. I named her Gulnare.

"As quickly as my wound permitted, I was transported to Washington, whither I took the mare with me. Her fondness for me grew daily, and soon became so marked as to cause universal comment. I had her boarded while in Washington at the corner of—Street and—Avenue. The groom had instructions to lead her around to the window against which was my bed, at the hospital, twice every day, so that by opening the sash I might reach out my hand and pet her. But the second day, no sooner had she reached the street, than she broke suddenly from the groom and dashed away at full speed. I was lying, bolstered up in bed, reading, when I heard the rush of flying feet, and in an instant, with a loud, joyful neigh, she checked herself in front of my window. And when the nurse lifted the sash, the beautiful creature thrust her head through the aperture, and rubbed her nose against my shoulder like a dog. I am not ashamed to say that I put both my arms around her neck, and, burying my face in her silken mane, kissed her again and again. Wounded, weak, and away from home, with only strangers to wait upon me, and scant service at that, the affection of this lovely creature for me, so tender and touching, seemed almost human, and my heart went out to her beyond any power of expression, as to the only being, of all the thousands around me, who thought of me and loved me. Shortly after her appearance at my window, the groom, who had divined where he should find her, came into the yard. But she would not allow him to come near her, much less touch her. If he tried to approach she would lash out at him with her heels most spitefully, and then, laying back her ears and opening her mouth savagely, would make a short dash at him, and, as the terrified African disappeared around the corner of the hospital, she would wheel, and, with a face bright as a happy child's, come trotting to the window for me to pet her. I shouted to the groom to go back to the stable, for I had no doubt but that she would return to her stall when I closed the window. Rejoiced at the permission, he departed. After some thirty minutes, the last ten of which she was standing with her slim, delicate head in my lap, while I braided her foretop and combed out her silken mane, I lifted her head, and, patting her softly on either cheek, told her that she must 'go.' I gently pushed her head out of the window and closed it, and then, holding up my hand, with the palm turned toward her, charged her, making the appropriate motion, to 'go away right straight back to her stable.' For a moment she stood looking steadily at me, with an indescribable expression of hesitation and surprise in her clear, liquid eyes, and then, turning lingeringly, walked slowly out of the yard.

"Twice a day for nearly a month, while I lay in the hospital, did Gulnare visit me. At the appointed hour the groom would slip her headstall, and, without a word of command, she would dart out of the stable, and, with her long, leopard-like lope, go sweeping down the street and come dashing into the hospital yard, checking herself with the same glad neigh at my window; nor did she ever once fail, at the closing of the sash, to return directly to her stall. The groom informed me that every morning and evening, when the hour of her visit drew near, she would begin to chafe and worry, and, by pawing and pulling at the halter, advertise him that it was time for her to be released.

"But of all exhibitions of happiness, either by beast or man, hers was the most positive on that afternoon when, racing into the yard, she found me leaning on a crutch outside the hospital building. The whole corps of nurses came to the doors, and all the poor fellows that could move themselves—for Gulnare had become a universal favorite, and the boys looked for her daily visits nearly, if not quite, as ardently as I did—crawled to the windows to see her. What gladness was expressed in every movement! She would come prancing toward me, head and tail erect, and, pausing, rub her head against my shoulder, while I patted her glossy neck; then suddenly, with a sidewise spring, she would break away, and with her long tail elevated until her magnificent brush, fine and silken as the golden hair of a blonde, fell in a great spray on either flank, and, her head curved to its proudest arch, pace around me with that high action and springing step peculiar to the thoroughbred. Then like a flash, dropping her brush and laying back her ears and stretching her nose straight out, she would speed away with that quick, nervous, low-lying action which marks the rush of racers, when side by side and nose to nose lapping each other, with the roar of cheers on either hand and along the seats above them, they come straining up the home stretch. Returning from one of these arrowy flights, she would come curvetting back, now pacing sidewise as on parade, now dashing her hind feet high into the air, and anon vaulting up and springing through the air, with legs well under her, as if in the act of taking a five-barred gate, and finally would approach and stand happy in her reward—my caress.

"The war, at last, was over, Gulnare and I were in at the death with Sheridan at the Five Forks. Together we had shared the pageant at Richmond and Washington, and never had I seen her in better spirits than on that day at the capital. It was a sight indeed to see her as she came down Pennsylvania Avenue. If the triumphant procession had been all in her honor and mine, she could not have moved with greater grace and pride. With dilating eye and tremulous ear, ceaselessly champing her bit, her heated blood bringing out the magnificent lacework of veins over her entire body, now and then pausing, and with a snort gathering herself back upon her haunches as for a mighty leap, while she shook the froth from her bits, she moved with a high, prancing step down the magnificent street, the admired of all beholders. Cheer after cheer was given, huzza after huzza rang out over her head from roofs and balcony, bouquet after bouquet was launched by fair and enthusiastic admirers before her; and yet, amid the crash and swell of music, the cheering and tumult, so gentle and manageable was she, that, though I could feel her frame creep and tremble under me as she moved through that whirlwind of excitement, no check or curb was needed, and the bridle-lines—the same she wore when she came to me at Malvern Hill—lay unlifted on the pommel of the saddle. Never before had I seen her so grandly herself. Never before had the fire and energy, the grace and gentleness, of her blood so revealed themselves. This was the day and the event she needed. And all the royalty of her ancestral breed—a race of equine kings—flowing as without taint or cross from him that was the pride and wealth of the whole tribe of desert rangers, expressed itself in her. I need not say that I shared her mood. I sympathized in her every step. I entered into all her royal humors. I patted her neck and spoke loving and cheerful words to her. I called her my beauty, my pride, my pet. And did she not understand me? Every word! Else why that listening ear turned back to catch my softest whisper; why the responsive quiver through the frame, and the low, happy neigh? 'Well,' I exclaimed, as I leaped from her back at the close of the review—alas! that words spoken in lightest mood should portend so much!—'well, Gulnare, if you should die, your life has had its triumph. The nation itself, through its admiring capital, has paid tribute to your beauty, and death can never rob you of your fame.' And I patted her moist neck and foam-flecked shoulders, while the grooms were busy with head and loins.

"That night our brigade made its bivouac just over Long Bridge, almost on the identical spot where four years before I had camped my company of three months' volunteers. With what experiences of march and battle were those four years filled! For three of these years Gulnare had been my constant companion. With me she had shared my tent, and not rarely my rations, for in appetite she was truly human, and my steward always counted her as one of our 'mess.' Twice had she been wounded—once at Fredericksburg, through the thigh; and once at Cold Harbor, where a piece of shell tore away a part of her scalp. So completely did it stun her, that for some moments I thought her dead, but to my great joy she shortly recovered her senses. I had the wound carefully dressed by our brigade surgeon, from whose care she came in a month with the edges of the wound so nicely united that the eye could with difficulty detect the scar. This night, as usual, she lay at my side, her head almost touching mine. Never before, unless when on a raid and in face of the enemy, had I seen her so uneasy. Her movements during the night compelled wakefulness on my part. The sky was cloudless, and in the dim light I lay and watched her. Now she would stretch herself at full length, and rub her head on the ground. Then she would start up, and, sitting on her haunches, like a dog, lift one foreleg and paw her neck and ears. Anon she would rise to her feet and shake herself, walk off a few rods, return and lie down again by my side. I did not know what to make of it, unless the excitement of the day had been too much for her sensitive nerves. I spoke to her kindly and petted her. In response she would rub her nose against me, and lick my hand with her tongue—a peculiar habit of hers—like a dog. As I was passing my hand over her head, I discovered that it was hot, and the thought of the old wound flashed into my mind, with a momentary fear that something might be wrong about her brain, but after thinking it over I dismissed it as incredible. Still I was alarmed. I knew that something was amiss, and I rejoiced at the thought that I should soon be at home where she could have quiet, and, if need be, the best of nursing. At length the morning dawned, and the mare and I took our last meal together on Southern soil—the last we ever took together. The brigade was formed in line for the last time, and as I rode down the front to review the boys she moved with all her old battle grace and power. Only now and then, by a shake of the head, was I reminded of her actions during the night. I said a few words of farewell to the men whom I had led so often to battle, with whom I had shared perils not a few, and by whom, as I had reason to think, I was loved, and then gave, with a voice slightly unsteady, the last order they would ever receive from me: 'Brigade, Attention, Ready to break ranks, Break Ranks.' The order was obeyed. But ere they scattered, moved by a common impulse, they gave first three cheers for me, and then, with the same heartiness and even more power, three cheers for Gulnare. And she, standing there, looking with her bright, cheerful countenance full at the men, pawing with her forefeet, alternately, the ground, seemed to understand the compliment; for no sooner had the cheering died away than she arched her neck to its proudest curve, lifted her thin, delicate head into the air, and gave a short, joyful neigh.

"My arrangements for transporting her had been made by a friend the day before. A large, roomy car had been secured, its floor strewn with bright clean straw, a bucket and a bag of oats provided, and everything done for her comfort. The car was to be attached to the through express, in consideration of fifty dollars extra, which I gladly paid, because of the greater rapidity with which it enabled me to make my journey. As the brigade broke up into groups, I glanced at my watch and saw that I had barely time to reach the cars before they started. I shook the reins upon her neck, and with a plunge, startled at the energy of my signal, away she flew. What a stride she had! What an elastic spring! She touched and left the earth as if her limbs were of spiral wire. When I reached the car my friend was standing in front of it, the gang-plank was ready, I leaped from the saddle, and, running up the plank into the car, whistled to her; and she, timid and hesitating, yet unwilling to be separated from me, crept slowly and cautiously up the steep incline and stood beside me. Inside I found a complete suit of flannel clothes with a blanket and, better than all, a lunch-basket. My friend explained that he had bought the clothes as he came down to the depot, thinking, as he said, 'that they would be much better than your regimentals,' and suggested that I doff the one and don the other. To this I assented the more readily as I reflected that I would have to pass one night at least in the car, with no better bed than the straw under my feet. I had barely time to undress before the cars were coupled and started. I tossed the clothes to my friend with the injunction to pack them in my trunk and express them on to me, and waved him my adieu. I arrayed myself in the nice, cool flannel and looked around. The thoughtfulness of my friend had anticipated every want. An old cane-seated chair stood in one corner. The lunch-basket was large and well supplied. Amid the oats I found a dozen oranges, some bananas, and a package of real Havana cigars. How I called down blessings on his thoughtful head as I took the chair and, lighting one of the fine-flavored figaros, gazed out on the fields past which we were gliding, yet wet with morning dew. As I sat dreamily admiring the beauty before me, Gulnare came and, resting her head upon my shoulder, seemed to share my mood. As I stroked her fine-haired, satin-like nose, recollection quickened and memories of our companionship in perils thronged into my mind. I rode again that midnight ride to Knoxville, when Burnside lay intrenched, desperately holding his own, waiting for news from Chattanooga of which I was the bearer, chosen by Grant himself because of the reputation of my mare. What riding that was! We started, ten riders of us in all, each with the same message. I parted company the first hour out with all save one, an iron-gray stallion of Messenger blood. Jack Murdock rode him, who learned his horsemanship from buffalo and Indian hunting on the plains—not a bad school to graduate from. Ten miles out of Knoxville the gray, his flanks dripping with Wood, plunged up abreast of the mare's shoulders and fell dead; and Gulnare and I passed through the lines alone. I had ridden the terrible race without whip or spur. With what scenes of blood and flight she would ever he associated! And then I thought of home, unvisited for four long years—that home I left a stripling, but to which I was returning a bronzed and brawny man. I thought of mother and Bob—how they would admire her!—of old Ben, the family groom, and of that one who shall be nameless, whose picture I had so often shown to Gulnare as the likeness of her future mistress; had they not all heard of her, my beautiful mare, she who came to me from the smoke and whirlwind, my battle-gift? How they would pat her soft, smooth sides, and tie her mane with ribbons, and feed her with all sweet things from open and caressing palm! And then I thought of one who might come after her to bear her name and repeat at least some portion of her beauty—a horse honored and renowned the country through, because of the transmission of the mother's fame.

"About three o'clock in the afternoon a change came over Gulnare. I had fallen asleep upon the straw, and she had come and awakened me with a touch of her nose. The moment I started up I saw that something was the matter. Her eyes were dull and heavy. Never before had I seen the light go out of them. The rocking of the car as it went jumping and vibrating along seemed to irritate the car. Touching it, I found that the skin over the brain was hot as fire. Her breathing grew rapidly louder and louder. Each breath was drawn with a kind of gasping effort. The lids with their silken fringe drooped wearily over the lustreless eyes. The head sank lower and lower, until the nose almost touched the floor. The ears, naturally so lively and erect, hung limp and widely apart. The body was cold and senseless. A pinch elicited no motion. Even my voice was at last unheeded. To word and touch there came, for the first time in all our intercourse, no response. I knew as the symptoms spread what was the matter. The signs bore all one way. She was in the first stages of phrenitis, or inflammation of the brain. In other words, my beautiful mare was going mad.

"I was well versed in the anatomy of the horse. Loving horses from my very childhood, there was little in veterinary practice with which I was not familiar. Instinctively, as soon as the symptoms had developed themselves, and I saw under what frightful disorder Gulnare was laboring, I put my hand into my pocket for my knife, in order to open a vein. There was no knife there. Friends, I have met with many surprises. More than once in battle and scout have I been nigh death; but never did my blood desert my veins and settle so around the heart, never did such a sickening sensation possess me, as when, standing in that car with my beautiful mare before me marked with those horrible symptoms, I made that discovery. My knife, my sword, my pistols even, were with my suit in the care of my friend, two hundred miles away. Hastily, and with trembling fingers, I searched my clothes, the lunch-basket, my linen; not even a pin could I find. I shoved open the sliding door, and swung my hat and shouted, hoping to attract some brakeman's attention. The train was thundering along at full speed, and none saw or heard me. I knew her stupor would not last long. A slight quivering of the lip, an occasional spasm running through the frame, told me too plainly that the stage of frenzy would soon begin. 'My God,' I exclaimed in despair, as I shut the door and turned toward her, 'must I see you die, Gulnare, when the opening of a vein would save you? Have you borne me, my pet, through all these years of peril, the icy chill of winter, the heat and torment of summer, and all the thronging dangers of a hundred bloody battles, only to die torn by fierce agonies, when so near a peaceful home?'