PRINCE MORDGE. 243 



Of his education I can only speak traditionally. I 

 never remember him anything but a well mannered, 

 talented dog of dignified demeanour. He belonged to 

 our eldest brother, whose familiar home-sohriqtLet was 

 Yetta, who had a rare talent for educating the lower 

 animals. He treated them with uniform kindness. 

 He believed their moral sense to be very like our 

 own. He said that his dog could appreciate justice, 

 truth, honour, unselfishness as well as a man could ; 

 and in educating Slop he acted on that belief by 

 always appealing to the dog's moral sense before 

 resorting to corporal punishment. Slop was never 

 corrected when his master was angry, nor promised a 

 reward without receiving it, nor ever cheated in any 

 way. 



A naturalist anxious to secure a fine specimen, 

 would have been highly aggravated to have the bird 

 he had shot so neatly carried to his feet a mangled 

 bunch of feathers. Slop's joyous bark and wagging tail 

 showed indeed that he felt he had deserved credit for 

 bringing the bird at all, but it took many lessons to teach 

 him that he must bring it without ruffling a feather. 

 Kindness and patience succeeded before long in making 

 Slop invaluable as a retriever and pointer, although he 

 was only a Scotch collie. He was never a very play- 

 ful dog, I believe, but seemed from his earliest hours 

 to have looked on life from its serious points of view. 

 He was characterised by that gravity of deportment 

 which usually accompanies a fine sense of what is due 

 to one's self. We children seldom ventured to take 



