ALL SORTS.
If thy heart be right, then will every creature be to thee a mirror of life, and a book of holy doctrine.—Thomas À Kempis.
It would be pleasant to believe it was a proof of a good and tender nature to delight in pets, but men and women, notorious for cruelty and bad lives, have been devoted to them, lavishing tenderness, elsewhere denied. Catullus, the famous Roman poet, wrote a lament for Lesbia’s Sparrow; Lesbia, the shameless, false-hearted beauty who could weep for a dead bird, but poison her husband! You often see pretty plaster heads of Lesbia with the bird perched upon her finger, her face bent toward it with a look that is a caress. And the poem has not lost its grace or charm through all the centuries.