single hair of that mouse was wasted. When she was chewing it she
nodded and grunted, as though critically tasting and relishing it.

My father was a steadfast enthusiast on religious matters, and, of
course, attended almost every sort of church-meeting, especially
revival meetings. They were occasionally held in summer, but mostly
in winter when the sleighing was good and plenty of time available.
One hot summer day father drove Nob to Portage and back, twenty-four
miles over a sandy road. It was a hot, hard, sultry day's work, and
she had evidently been over-driven in order to get home in time for
one of these meetings. I shall never forget how tired and wilted she
looked that evening when I unhitched her; how she drooped in her
stall, too tired to eat or even to lie down. Next morning it was plain
that her lungs were inflamed; all the dreadful symptoms were just the
same as my own when I had pneumonia. Father sent for a Methodist
minister, a very energetic, resourceful man, who was a blacksmith,
farmer, butcher, and horse-doctor as well as minister; but all his
gifts and skill were of no avail. Nob was doomed. We bathed her head
and tried to get her to eat something, but she couldn't eat, and in
about a couple of weeks we turned her loose to let her come around the
house and see us in the weary suffering and loneliness of the shadow
of death. She tried to follow us children, so long her friends and
workmates and playmates. It was awfully touching. She had several
hemorrhages, and in the forenoon of her last day, after she had had
one of her dreadful spells of bleeding and gasping for breath, she
came to me trembling, with beseeching, heartbreaking looks, and after
I had bathed her head and tried to soothe and pet her, she lay down
and gasped and died. All the family gathered about her, weeping, with
aching hearts. Then dust to dust.

She was the most faithful, intelligent, playful, affectionate,
human-like horse I ever knew, and she won all our hearts. Of the many
advantages of farm life for boys one of the greatest is the gaining a
real knowledge of animals as fellow-mortals, learning to respect them
and love them, and even to win some of their love. Thus godlike
sympathy grows and thrives and spreads far beyond the teachings of
churches and schools, where too often the mean, blinding, loveless
doctrine is taught that animals have neither mind nor soul, have no
rights that we are bound to respect, and were made on