DEATH OF AARON 173 



Not having been present during his short illness or at 

 the time of his death, I cannot relate any of the scenes 

 accompanying them ; but the kind old keeper who attended 

 him declares that he never became reconciled to the death 

 of Elisheba, and that his loneliness preyed upon him almost 

 as much as the disease. When I looked upon his cold, 

 lifeless body, I felt that I was indeed bereft of one of the 

 dearest and most loyal pets that any mortal had ever known. 

 His fidelity to me had been shown in a hundred ways, and 

 his affections had never wavered. How could any one 

 requite such integrity with anything unkind? 



To those who possess the higher instincts of humanity 

 it will not be thought absurd in me to confess that the 

 conduct of these creatures awoke in me a feeling more 

 exalted than a mere sense of kindness. It touched some 

 chord of nature that yields a richer tone. But only those 

 who have known such pets as I have known them can feel 

 towards them as I have felt. 



I have no desire to bias the calm judgment or bribe the 

 sentiment of him who scorns the love of nature, by clothing 

 these humble creatures in the garb of human dignity ; but 

 to him who is not so imbued with self-conceit as to be blind 

 to all evidence and deaf to all reason, it must appear that 

 they are gifted with faculties and passions like to those of 

 man ; differing in degree, but not in kind. Moved by such 

 conviction, who could fail to pity that poor, lone captive in 

 his iron cell, far from his native land, slowly dying ? It may 

 be a mere freak of sentiment that I regret not having been 

 with him to soothe and comfort his last hours, but I do regret 

 it deeply. He had the right to expect it of me, as a duty. 



