, and he laughed a good deal when we told him he must be good to
Jack, and give him plenty of oats, and not make him work too hard. I
went out, with my sister, to bid our old friend a last sad good-bye. We
carried him some green grass--we knew how well he loved grass, he had
given us proof enough of that--and while he was eating it, and the man
was preparing to take him away, we talked to old Jack till the tears
stood in our eyes; we told him how sorry we were to part with him; and
he seemed to be sad, too, for he stopped eating his grass, and looked at
us tenderly, while we put our arms around his neck and caressed him for
the last time.

[Illustration: PARTING WITH OLD JACK.]

I have had a great many pets since--cats and dogs, squirrels and
rabbits, canary birds and parrots--but never any that I loved more than
I did old Jack; and to this day I am ashamed of the deception I
practiced upon him in the matter of the oats, when trying to catch him.
I don't wonder he resented the trick, and played one on me in return.

But I am transgressing the rule I laid down for myself in the outset of
these stories--not to prate much about my own pets. According to this
rule, I ought to have touched much more lightly upon the life and times
of old Jack.

A correspondent of the Providence (R. I.) Journal, gives an account of a
horse in his neighborhood that was remarkably fond of music. "A
physician," he says, "called daily to visit a patient opposite to my
place of residence. We had a piano in the room on the street, on which a
young lady daily practiced for several hours in the morning. The weather
was warm, and the windows were open, and the moment the horse caught the
sound of the piano, he would deliberately wheel about, cross the street,
place himself as near the window as possible, and there, with ears and
eyes dilating, would he quietly stand and listen till his owner came for
him. This was his daily practice. Sometimes the young lady would stop
playing when the doctor drove up. The horse would then remain quietly in
his place; but the first stroke of a key would arrest his attention, and
half a dozen notes would invariably call him across the street. I
witnessed the effect several times."

There was a show-bill printed during the reign of Queen Anne, a copy of
which is still to be seen in one of the public libraries in England, to
the following effect: "To be seen, at the Ship, upon Great Tower Hill,
the finest taught hor