a murmur of anything but satisfaction on Punch's part; and one
favorite performance of theirs was an amateur representation of "Daniel
in the Lion's Den," Punch being all the animals, his master, of course,
being the prophet himself. The struggle for victory was something awful.
Daniel seemed to be torn limb from limb, Punch, all the time, roaring
like a thousand beasts of the forest, and treating his victim as
tenderly as if he were wooing a sucking dove. The entertainment--when
there were young persons at the house--was of nightly occurrence, and
always repeatedly encored. Punch, however, never cared to play Lion to
the Daniel of anybody else.

One of Punch's expressions of poetic affection is still preserved by a
little girl who is now grown up, and has little girls of her own. It was
attached to a Christmas-gift--a locket containing a scrap of blue-gray
wool. And here it is:

"Punch Hutton is ready to vow and declare
That his friend Milly Barrett's a brick.
He begs she'll accept of this lock of his hair;
And he sends her his love--and a lick."

Punch's most memorable performance, perhaps, was his appearance at a
dinner-party of little ladies and gentlemen. They were told that the
chief dish of the entertainment was one which they all particularly
liked, and their curiosity, naturally, was greatly excited. The table
was cleared, the carving-knife was sharpened in a most demonstrative
manner, and half a dozen pairs of very wide-open little eyes were fixed
upon the door through which the waitress entered, bearing aloft an
enormous platter, upon which nothing was visible but a cover of equally
enormous size--both of them borrowed, by-the-way, for the important
occasion. When the cover was raised, with all ceremony, Punch was
discovered, in a highly nervous state, and apparently as much delighted
and amused at the situation as was anybody else. The guests, with one
voice, declared that he was "sweet enough to eat."

Punch died very suddenly; poisoned, it is supposed, by somebody whom he
never injured. He never injured a living soul! And when Mary Cook dug a
hole, by the side of Whiskie's grave, one raw afternoon, and put Punch
into it, his master is not ashamed to confess that he shut himself up in
his room, threw himself onto the bed, and cried as he has not cried
since they took his mother away from him.

Mop was the third of the quartet of dogs, and he came into the household
like the Quality of Merc