IN BOOKS AND REAL LIFE 205 



said of his understanding of conversation ? The 

 Ettrick Shepherd wrote poems and novels, and 

 may be supposed to have drawn on his imagination. 

 But Frederick St. John, author of some of the 

 very best books on sport and natural history, is 

 above suspicion. And he tells us that when sitting 

 with a shepherd one evening in his cottage on 

 the moors, the man remarked casually in course of 

 conversation and without changing his tone, ^' I'm 

 thinking that the cow's in the corn." Whereupon 

 his collie, who had seemed quite indifferent to their 

 talk, jumped up, rushed to the door, saw that it 

 was a false alarm, and curled himself up again. 

 A few minutes afterwards the same trick was 

 played, with the same results. The third time 

 the victim of the joke was not to be befooled, 

 and never moved a muscle. Then there was Scott's 

 old favourite at Ashestiel, equally at home in human 

 speech. The day came when he could not follow 

 his master in his rides, and his rheumatic limbs 

 compelled him to keep the hearthrug. Towards 

 the dinner-hour, the butler would come into the 

 room and say, '^Camp, my man, the sheriff's 

 coming home by the hill or by the river," as the 

 case might be. Then the old fellow pulled himself 

 together, and tottered out to the back or front of 

 the house to welcome his master. 



Well-bred dogs are extraordinarily sensitive to 

 ridicule. Some of them carry self-respect to 

 excess, and are apt to spoil pleasant company by 

 absurd suspicion. They take an accidental laugh, 



