ized two cock chickens, which she reared with infinite care. When
they began to crow, their foster-mother was as much annoyed as she had
been with the swimming of the young ducks, and never failed to repress
their attempts at crowing.
A man engaged in smuggling lace into France from Flanders, trained an
active and sagacious spaniel to aid him in his enterprise. He caused
him to be shaved, and procured for him the skin of another dog of the
same hair and the same shape. He then rolled the lace round the body of
the dog, and put over it the other skin so adroitly that the trick
could not be easily discovered. The lace being thus arranged, the
smuggler would say to the docile messenger, "Homeward, my friend." At
these words, the dog would start, and pass boldly through the gates of
Malines and Valenciennes in the face of the vigilant officers placed
there to prevent smuggling.
Having thus passed the bounds, he would await his master at a little
distance in the open country. There they mutually caressed and feasted,
and the merchant placed his rich package in a place of security,
renewing his occupation as occasion required. Such was the success of
this smuggler, that, in less than five years, he amassed a handsome
fortune, and kept his coach.
Envy pursues the prosperous. A mischievous neighbor at length betrayed
the lace merchant; notwithstanding all his efforts to disguise the dog,
he was suspected, watched, and discovered. But the cunning of the dog
was equal to the emergency. Did the spies of the custom-house expect
him at one gate, he saw them at a distance, and ran to another; were
all the gates shut against him, he overcame every obstacle; sometimes
he leaped over the wall; at others, passing secretly behind a carriage,
or running between the legs of travellers, he would thus accomplish his
aim. One day, however, while swimming a stream near Malines, he was
shot, and died in the water. There was then about him five thousand
crowns' worth of lace--the loss of which did not afflict his master,
but he was inconsolable for the loss of his faithful dog.
A dog belonging to a chamois-hunter, being on the glaciers in
Switzerland, with an Englishman and his master, observed the former
approaching one of the crevices in the ice, to look into it. He began
to slide towards the edge; his guide, with a view to save him, caught
his coat, and both slid onward, till the dog seized his master's
clothes, and preserved them both
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