otherwise he chases the cows. Sedate pony Grant used
to draw the cart in which the children went driving when they were very
small, the driver being their old nurse Mame, who had held their mother
in her arms when she was born, and who was knit to them by a tie as
close as any tie of blood. I doubt whether I ever saw Mame really
offended with them except once when, out of pure but misunderstood
affection, they named a pig after her. They loved pony Grant. Once I
saw the then little boy of three hugging pony Grant's fore legs. As
he leaned over, his broad straw hat tilted on end, and pony Grant
meditatively munched the brim; whereupon the small boy looked up with
a wail of anguish, evidently thinking the pony had decided to treat him
like a radish.

The children had pets of their own, too, of course. Among them guinea
pigs were the stand-bys--their highly unemotional nature fits them
for companionship with adoring but over-enthusiastic young masters and
mistresses. Then there were flying squirrels, and kangaroo rats, gentle
and trustful, and a badger whose temper was short but whose nature was
fundamentally friendly. The badger's name was Josiah; the particular
little boy whose property he was used to carry him about, clasped firmly
around what would have been his waist if he had had any. Inasmuch as
when on the ground the badger would play energetic games of tag with
the little boy and nip his bare legs, I suggested that it would be
uncommonly disagreeable if he took advantage of being held in the little
boy's arms to bite his face; but this suggestion was repelled with
scorn as an unworthy assault on the character of Josiah. "He bites legs
sometimes, but he never bites faces," said the little boy. We also had
a young black bear whom the children christened Jonathan Edwards, partly
out of compliment to their mother, who was descended from that great
Puritan divine, and partly because the bear possessed a temper in
which gloom and strength were combined in what the children regarded as
Calvinistic proportions. As for the dogs, of course there were many,
and during their lives they were intimate and valued family friends,
and their deaths were household tragedies. One of them, a large yellow
animal of several good breeds and valuable rather because of psychical
than physical traits, was named "Susan" by his small owners, in
commemoration of another retainer, a white cow; the fact that the cow
and the dog were not of the