We remember an instance of his sympathy for animals. We had been making an excursion into the country. It was high noon of a sultry summer day; eggs were cooking in the sun, and the mercury in the thermometer stood at the top of the tube. Passing out of a small village, we passed a young lady pleasantly and coolly attired in white, and carrying a sunshade whose grateful shadow melted into the cool, clear olive of her fine complexion.
Mr. Potts sighed, for she reminded him of Miss Polly Martine at the same age; and Polly Martine reminded him of parasols by some recondite association. Mr. Potts remembered the first umbrella that was brought into Boston. He always carried one that might have been the first, it was so venerable, yet whole and decent, like an old gentleman in good preservation. It was a green silk one, with a plain, mahogany handle, and a ring instead of a ferrule, and very large. Discoursing of umbrellas, we came upon a cow. Mr. Potts was fond of cows—grateful to them—always spoke of them with respect. This particular cow inhabited a small paddock by the roadside, which was enclosed by a Virginia fence, and contained very little grass, and no provision for shade and shelter. So the cow stood in the sunshine, with her head resting on the fence, and her tongue lolling out of her mouth, and her large, intelligent eyes fixed on the far distance, where a herd of kine were feasting knee-deep in a field of clover, beside a running brook, overshadowed by magnificent walnut trees.
"Poor thing!" said Mr. Potts; and he stopped short and looked at the cow.
The cow looked at Mr. Potts. One had evidently magnetically influenced the other.
"She is a female, like the lady we encountered," said Mr. Potts, "but," added he, with a burst of feeling, "she has no parasol!"
The assertion was indisputable. It was a truism, cows are never provided with parasols,—but then great men are famous for uttering truisms, and we venerated Mr. Potts for following the example.
"It is now twelve o'clock!" said Mr. Potts, consulting his repeater. "At half past four, the shadow of the buttonwood will fall into this poor animal's pasture. Four hours and a half of torture, rendered more painful by the contemplation of the luxuries of her remote companions! It is insufferable!"
Then Mr. Potts, with a genial smile on his Pickwickian countenance, expanded his green silk umbrella, mounted the fence, on which he sat astride, and patiently held the umbrella over the cow's head for the space of four and a half mortal hours. The action was sublime. I regret to add that the animal proved ungrateful, and, when Mr. Potts closed his umbrella on the shadow of the buttonwood relieving guard, facilitated his descent from the Virginia fence by an ungraceful application of her horns to the amplitude of his venerable person.
It was in the summer following, that the incident I am about to relate occurred. It was fly-time,—I remember it well. We were again walking together, when we came to a wall-eyed horse, harnessed to a dog's meat cart, and left standing by his unfeeling master while he indulged in porter and pipes in a small suburban pothouse, much affected by Milesians. The horse was much annoyed by flies, and testified his impatience and suffering by stamping and tossing his head. Mr. Potts was the first to notice that the poor animal had no tail,—for the two or three vertebræ attached to the termination of the spine could hardly be supposed to constitute a tail proper. The discovery filled him with horror. A horse in fly-time without a tail! The case was worse than that of the cow.
"And here I am!" exclaimed the great and good man, in a tone of the bitterest self-reproach, "luxuriating in a pigtail which that poor creature would be glad of!"