Caesar, the Clever Rascal 223 



last to be called " Old Reliable," and any 

 good driver, who was clever enough to see 

 through his tricks, could get a lot of work 

 out of him. 



But. through all the years I owned him 

 he would always bear watching. Out of 

 harness as well as in it, he was up to tricks 

 and schemes, some of which seem so in- 

 credible, that if they had not been observed 

 by reliable witnesses, we should hesitate to 

 record them here. The following incident 

 of Ca?sar's cleverness, showing his posses- 

 sion of reasoning powers in a remarkable de- 

 gree for a dog, was well known by a number 

 of persons and was much talked about at 

 the time. 



It occurred in the spring of the year when 

 the snow melting on the land with the first 

 rains had swollen our creeks and rivers into 

 torrents. On the great lake before our 

 northern home the ice was still a great solid 

 mass, several feet in thickness. Near our 

 home was one of these swollen, rapid 

 streams that, rushing down into the lake, 

 had cut a delta of open water in the ice at 

 its mouth. In this open place my faithful 

 servant, Martin Papanekis, had placed a gill 

 net for the purpose of catching fish. Liv- 



