CHILDREN'S ANIMALS AND PETS 



41 



fire and spirit and impatient to go, he quietly threw off his coat, and 

 swinging himself up, sat securely astride the horse. Then he guided 

 him about for a while with the reins, without striking him or jerking 

 at the bit. When now he saw that the horse was getting over his 

 nervousness and was eager to gallop ahead, he let him go, driving 

 him on with a sterner voice and with kicks of his foot. In the group 

 of onlookers about Philip there prevailed, from the first, the silence 

 of intensely anxious concern. But when the boy turned the horse 

 and came galloping up to them with pride and joy in his face, they 

 all burst out into a cheer. His father, they say, shed tears for very 

 joy, and, as he dismounted, kissed him on the head, and said : " My 

 son, seek thee a kingdom suited to thy powers ; Macedonia is too 

 strait for thee." 



Bucephalus became from this time the property and the insepa- 

 rable companion of Alexander. He accompanied him on his cam- 

 paigns, "sharing many toils and dangers with him," and was generally 

 the horse ridden by him in battle. No one else was ever allowed 

 to mount him, as Arrian says, " because he deemed all other riders 

 unworthy." He is reported to have been a magnificent black charger 

 of extraordinary size, and to have been marked with a white spot on 

 the forehead. Benjamin Ide Wheeler, Life of Alexander the 

 Great. 



The Cat. — This, according to Shaler, ** is the only ani- 

 mal that has been tolerated, esteemed, and, at times, 

 worshipped, without having a single distinctly valuable 

 quality." "It is," he goes on to say, ** in a small way, 

 serviceable in keeping down the excessive development of 

 small rodents, which from the beginning have been the 

 self-invited guests of man. As it is in a certain indiffer- 

 ent way sympathetic, and by its caresses appears to indi- 

 cate affection, it has awakened a measure of sympathy 

 which it hardly deserves. I have been unable to find 

 any authentic instances which go to show the existence 

 in cats of any real love for their masters." 



