The Happy Garden 



a-breeding, to the great horror of the shade of 

 Malthus and the destruction of their own charming 

 social qualities. I have known at least one woman 

 who surrendered completely to the vice of Dumb 

 Friends' Friendship, and, when she died, her house 

 contained ninety-six cats, thirty dogs, forty-nine 

 birds, a parakeet, a dish of turtles, two snakes, three 

 salamanders, and a monkey, together with an in- 

 describable litter. It did not contain another 

 human being, and, indeed, her dumb friends had 

 alienated all her others. 



These are, of course, extreme cases. 



Less extreme was the case of a family in London, 

 who could bear no thought of cruelty to animals, 

 and when some relations sent them some live 

 lobsters from Scotland, they, hearing that lobsters 

 scream when they are boiled, spared their lives and 

 laid them in a fresh-water stream, where they died 

 horribly and slowly of suffocation. 



The same sort of tender-heartedness makes other 

 people gorge their cats to biliousness with salmon, 

 and feed their dogs until their skins are blown out 

 as tight as a drum. There are women who will 

 hug their cats and slap their children : ladies who 

 will take their dogs a-visiting, and to the panto- 

 mime, and never go near their nurseries. And to 

 such a pitch has the craze for animals grown that 



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