ELIMINATING GRUESOME GRAVES 27 



Dogs. 



In twenty years' farming experience our dogs numbered 

 legion, and were mostly of high degree top notchers, and real com- 

 panions, answering our slightest wish if they but understood. 



Leo, the king of all our St. Bernards, never failed in honesty 

 and fealty but once, and was even then immediately ashamed 

 of. his lapse. It happened as follows, and it must be con- 

 fessed the provocation was great : It seems that a roasted 

 chicken had been stolen by him from a neighbor's kitchen range. 

 It was rescued from under the trap after an argument close to the 

 righting line at the end of a whip, and my friend told me the next day 

 that, lacking a neck and wing, his Sunday dinner had lost nothing 

 and tasted good* 



The bulldog, Princeton Tiger, college bred with one of the 

 boys, was pure white, the farm color. The fighting spirit he devel- 

 oped kept him at the end of a chain when on the farm, and when thus 

 in bondage everyone except his young master stayed at a respectful 

 distance. 



Angora Aurea, called for brevity Double "A," was one never- 

 to-be-forgotten home greeter ; the only cat who ever held a 

 deep place in my affections. Having no vestige of the cat's occa- 

 sional distrust of humans, he never zig-zagged, but came straight 

 toward one with the frankness of a dog, and rarely failed after 

 a greeting rub to crawl to my shoulder, remaining there for 

 hours while I walked about the farm. The memory of those sharp 

 claws as he traveled from shoulder to shoulder is still vivid. Brought 

 up with dogs, he had no fear of them, but too great confidence in a 

 treacherous cur belonging to a neighbor was his undoing, to the 

 lasting grief of the household. His epitaph read: "Here lies a good 

 cat who like the dog loved humans rather than locality." 



Vega was the proud mother of Leo, and, to be exact, of forty- 

 nine other glorious St. Bernards with which we either gladdened or 

 saddened forty-nine friends from Philadelphia to Boston. Their 

 histories, as far as we followed them, showed many of remark- 

 able size but rather testy tempers, but Vega and her royal and 

 loyal son Leo were ever models of what dogs should be. We 

 found St. Bernards as a rule victims of wanderlust, but for ten years 

 Vega watched, night and day, house, barnyard and stock until she 

 joined the ranks of the dog majority. 



Some of our dogs were especially gifted in sensorial acuteness 

 and when tried out proved fit exponents of and worthy the well 

 known tribute of Senator Vest of Missouri to the faithful dog. While 

 attending court in a country town he was urged by the attorneys on 

 a dog case to help them, being offered $250 by the plaintiff. Volu- 



*Puppyhood frequently poached in the chicken yard. When caught in the act instead 

 of strapping the puppy we adopted the old-fashioned cure of strapping the dead chicken firmly 

 under the murderer's neck. A couple of weeks of this mental and physical suasion engender- 

 ed a dislike for stolen chicken for all time. 



