HERMON LEE ENSIGN. 

 Si fi^emirir. 



THE author of the little stories of domestic animals, 

 presented in this volume, was one of those many- 

 sided characters which our growingly complex civ- 

 ilization tends more and more to produce. Without 

 advantage of birth or fortune, living the life of a quiet 

 American citizen and dying before he had reached the 

 age of fifty, he had yet rounded a circle of experience 

 and achievement that makes his life a notable one and 

 its story one of interest and profit. To the world, to 

 the business community, and to his general friends, he 

 was known as a genial and companionable man, suc- 

 cessful in his affairs, light-hearted, and satisfied with 

 life. His more intimate friends knew that he had other 

 interests and feelings, which represented the deeper 

 and more vital portions of his nature. He had an 

 eager and imaginative temperament, an instinctive love 

 of what is good and true, and a hatred of what is bad 

 and wrong. From childhood he was a lover of domes- 

 tic animals ; and this love and friendship for them, 

 with a detestation of all that is ungentle and unkind 

 in the treatment of them by their natural protector 



