The Brownings had many pets, among them an owl, which after death was stuffed and given an honoured position in the poet’s library. Sydney Smith professed not to care for pets, especially disliking dogs; but he named his four oxen Tug and Lug, Haul and Crawl, and dosed them when he fancied they needed medicine. Miss Martineau relates that a phrenologist examining Sydney’s head announced, “This gentleman is a naturalist, always happy among his collections of birds and fishes.” “Sir,” said Sydney, turning upon him solemnly with wide-open eyes—“sir, I don’t know a fish from a bird.” But this ignorance and indifference were all assumed. His daughter, writing of his daily home life, says: “Dinner was scarcely over ere he called for his hat and stick and sallied forth for his evening stroll. Each cow and calf and horse and pig were in turn visited and fed and patted, and all seemed to welcome him; he cared for their comforts as he cared for the comforts of every living being around him.” He used to say: “I am for all cheap luxuries, even for animals; now, all animals have a passion for scratching their back bones; they break down your gates and palings to effect this. Look, this is my Universal Scratcher, a sharp-edged pole resting on a high and low post, adapted to every height, from a horse to a lamb. Even the Edinburgh Reviewer can take his turn; you have no idea how popular it is.” Who could resist repeating just here the wit’s impromptu epigram upon the sarcastic, diminutive Jeffrey when the caustic critic was surprised riding on the children’s pet donkey? “I still remember the joy-inspiring laughter that burst from my father at this unexpected sight, as, advancing toward his old friend, with a face beaming with delight, he exclaimed:
Witty as Horatius Flaccus,
As great a Jacobin as Gracchus,
Short, though not as fat as Bacchus,
Riding on a little jackass.”
Before saying good-bye to the donkey I must give the appeal of Mr. Evarts’s little daughter at their summer home in Windsor, Vermont, to her learned and judicial father; so naïve and irresistible:
“Dear Papa: Do come home soon. The donkey is so lonesome without you!”
I once heard Mr. Evarts lamenting to Chief-Justice Chase that he had been badly beaten at a game of High Low Jack by Ben, the learned pig. “I know now,” said he, “why two pipes are called a hog’s head. It is on account of their great capacity!”
One would fancy that a busy lawyer would have no time to give to pets, but this is far from true. Burnet, in his life of Sir Matthew Hale, the most eminent lawyer in the time of Charles I and Cromwell, says of him, that “his mercifulness extended even to his beasts, for when the horses that he had kept long grew old, he would not suffer them to be sold or much wrought, but ordered his man to turn them loose on his grounds and put them only to easy work, such as going to market and the like. He used old dogs also with the same care; his shepherd having one that was blind with age, he intended to have killed or lost him, but the judge coming to hear of it made one of his servants bring him home and feed him till he died. And he was scarce ever seen more angry than with one of his servants for neglecting a bird that he kept so that it died for want of food.”
Daniel Webster’s fondness for animals is well known. When his friends visited him at Marshfield the first excursion they must take would be to his barns and pastures, where he would point out the beauties of an Alderney, and mention the number of quarts she gave daily, with all a farmer’s pride, adding, “I know, for I measured it myself.” Choate used to tell a story à propos of this. Once, when spending the Sabbath at Marshfield, he went to his room after breakfast to read. Soon there came an authoritative knock at the door, and Mr. Webster shouted, “What are you doing, Choate?” He replied, “I’m reading.” “Oh,” said Webster, “come down and see the pigs.”