x Billy : a Memoir of an Old Friend 253 



should rather have said that his apprehension was 

 slow. I taught him one " trick," and then we came 

 mutually to the conclusion that tricks were beneath 

 his dignity. But if not clever, he certainly had an 

 odd kind of intelligence all his own. His native 

 obstinacy, which was intense, and well expressed in 

 his ears and coat, combined with a rigid training to 

 develop in him an extraordinary tenacity of habit. 

 When once he got an idea in his head, it was not 

 only fixed there for ever, but carried out to its logical 

 results in ways which frequently puzzled me. So 

 stubborn was his nature, that our relations were a 

 series of compromises ; my sway over him was so far 

 limited that it was an absolutism grounded on the 

 immutable laws of his own nature. Thrown together 

 as we were for so many years, and often alone for 

 days together, we came to recognise and act upon 

 each other's strong and weak points. In non- 

 essentials I never forced his obstinacy, but where he 

 had to be bent to my necessities I did not spare the 

 rod, and he felt the degradation so keenly that it was 

 rarely needed twice. So it was that he learnt to obey 

 certain signals in our walks, which prevented him 

 from disturbing any birds which I happened to wish 

 to observe. 



The strange power of the association of ideas was 

 never presented to me either in man or beast so 

 forcibly as in Billy. When I first took him to 



