INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR Xlll. 



brute, stroking his neck, talking to him in a sympa- 

 thetic way, and presently soothing him to a gentler 

 and more quiet mood. 'That horse has had a brutal 

 master,' said my friend. 4 Nothing but vicious treat- 

 ment makes a horse like that ; and now that his na- 

 ture has been spoiled by the fault of others, he is 

 treated all the worse on that account. That is man's 

 inhumanity to man's dependents a worse inhu- 

 manity, in some respects, than that to man, as being 

 more cowardly, and the victims more helpless and de- 

 fenceless.' It was this inhumanity to man's defence- 

 less dumb companions that lay like a burden on his 

 sympathies and occupied much of his thought in his 

 later years. It is the protest against this inhumanity, 

 and the desire to win men to a nobler view of their 

 duties and obligations, that form the key-note of the 

 stories here presented. My friend was, as I have said, 

 a many-sided man. In his early life he had resolved 

 to enter the ministry, and spent some time in studying 

 to that end ; he was fond of music, he had aspirations 

 in literature, he enjoyed social life, he had his fail- 

 share of success as the world goes; but he has said to 

 me, in speaking of personal ambitions and achieve- 

 ments, that the one man whose fame he most envied 

 was Mr. Henry Bergh , that if he felt he could leave 

 behind him such a record as this good man left, he 



