PKEFACE. IX 



Lot the ^^ Red Feather" ask his superior, the 

 ^' Green Feather," if in the hmnan race insanity 

 does not manifest itself in a hundred different 

 directions. The thinking, and, to a great extent, 

 reasoning^ brains of animals, — of the dog espe- 

 cially, — are just as liable to varied forms of 

 aberration as those of the human race. How 

 foolish, then, how cruel to timid men, nervous 

 women, and young children, to horse-shoe their 

 minds with a nailed and clinched horror that 

 every so-called ^^ mad dog" they see, brings de- 

 struction and death in a single bite. 



In the following pages there is a story of a 

 dog supposed to be mad with hydrophobia, and 

 a sentinel of the Guards, whose box in St. James's 

 Park was beneath the walls of my father's 

 garden, close to Spring Gardens passage. That 

 tale demonstrates the madness of a collected 

 mob, and the wise and gentle determination of a 

 poor, little, apparently friendless girl, in rescuing 

 her favourite from the insane cruelty of a crowd, 

 and the presented bayonet of a soldier, which w^as 

 about to dislodge the forlorn little four-footed 

 intruder from the sentry-box, where it had sought 

 safety from its pursuers in its terror and distress. 



In the cause of humanity, and in defence of 

 the poor dog, I deeply regret to say that it has 

 more than once become known to me, that, for 

 the sake of a ^^lark," the lowest of the lower 

 orders, when able to steal or entice a dog into 



