this pretence, and upon
his compliance he is fled from madly, or perhaps turned upon and growled
at most directly, if he show signs of losing interest in the game.

This ceaseless motion, with its attendant nervous strains, has prevented
any accumulation of flesh, and explains the name of Slim Jim affixed to
him by my namesake.

Jim consented now to rest for a moment at my feet, though at a loss to
know how I could be calm amid so many exciting smells. I promised him as
he lay there that he should never be compelled to learn any but the
fewest facts necessary to make him as harmless as he was happy; chiefly
not to bark at old ladies and babies, no matter how threatening their
aspect, as they passed our house. A few things he had already
learned--to avoid fences of the barbed wire, to respect the big cat from
across the way who sometimes called and treated him with watchful
disdain, and not to chew a baby robin if by any chance he caught one.
This last had been a hard lesson, his first contact with a problem only
a few days younger than Eden itself. It came to his understanding,
however, that if you mouth a helpless baby robin, a hand or a stick
falls upon you hurtfully, even if you evade it for the moment and
seclude yourself under a porch until it would seem that so trifling an
occurrence must have been utterly forgotten. This was the one big
sin--sin, to the best of our knowledge, being obedience to any natural
desire, the satisfaction of which is unaccountably followed by pain.

I told him this would probably be all that he need ever know; and he
looked up at me in a fashion he has, the silky brown ears falling either
side of the white face. It is a look of languishing, melting adoration,
and if I face him steadily, he must always turn away as if to avoid
being overcome--as if the sight of beauty so great as mine could be
borne full in the eyes only for the briefest of moments.

But Clem came now, ranging my breakfast dishes about the bowl of plum
flowers, and I approached the table with all the ardor he could have
wished at his softly spoken, "Yo' is suhved, Mahstah Majah."

The sight of Clem, however, inevitably suggests the person to whom I am
indebted for his sustaining ministrations. Potts had been a necessary
instrument in one of those complications which the gods devise among us
human ephemera for their mild amusement on a day of _ennui_. And Potts,
having served his purpose, had been neatly removed. I ha