In a trustworthy collection of epitaphs may be found this quaint tribute with old-fashioned formality to a pet bird:
“Here lieth, aged three months, the body of Richard Acanthus, a young person of unblemished character. He was taken in his callow infancy from the wing of a tender parent by the rough and pitiless hand of a two-legged animal without feathers.
“Though born with the most aspiring disposition and unbending love of freedom he was closely confined in a grated prison, and scarcely permitted to view those fields of which he had an undoubted charter.
“Deeply sensible of this infringement of his natural rights, he was often heard to petition for redress in the most plaintive notes of harmonious sorrow. At length his imprisoned soul burst the prison which his body could not, and left a lifeless heap of beauteous feathers.
“If suffering innocence can hope for retribution, deny not to the gentle shade of this unfortunate captive the humble though uncertain hope of animating some happier form; or trying his new-fledged pinions in some happy Elysium, beyond the reach of Man, the tyrant of this lower world.”
Few women are so fond of pets as Sarah Bernhardt. She carries five or six with her in all her travels. When in New York the French actress has apartments at the Hoffman House. When the writer last visited her there he was received, upon entering the sitting room, by half a dozen dogs, ranging in size and species from the massive St. Bernard to the tiny, shivering black and tan.
The actress rose from a low divan and extended one hand to her guest while she pressed two very small snakes to her bosom with the other. After she had resumed her seat upon the divan, and while conversing, she fondled the snakes or allowed them to squirm at will over her person.
In reply to questions, Madame Bernhardt said that the snakes were used in the famous scene where Cleopatra presses the asp to her bosom and dies. The actress explained that the snakes with which she was playing were presented to her by a gentleman in Philadelphia. She spoke regretfully of the death of the snakes which she had brought with her from France, and which had succumbed to the hardships of the ocean voyage.
Emily Crawford tells some good stories about “The Elder Dumas,” the most dashingly picturesque character, surely, in the whole range of literature. We quote a paragraph showing Dumas’s fondness for animals:
“At his architectural folly of Monte Cristo, near Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which he built at a cost of upward of seven hundred thousand francs, and sold for thirty-six thousand francs in 1848, Dumas had uninclosed grounds and gardens, which, with the house, afforded lodgings and entertainment not only to a host of Bohemian ‘sponges,’ but to all the dogs, cats, and donkeys that chose to quarter themselves in the place. It was called by the neighbours ‘la Maison de Bon Dieu.’ There was a menagerie in the park, peopled by three apes; Jugurtha, the vulture, whose transport from Africa, whence Dumas fetched him, cost forty thousand francs (it would be too long to tell why); a big parrot called Duval; a macaw named Papa, and another christened Everard; Lucullus, the golden pheasant; Cæsar, the game-cock; a pea-fowl and a guinea-fowl; Myeouf II, the Angora cat, and the Scotch pointer, Pritchard. This dog was a character. He was fond of canine society, and used to sit in the road looking out for other dogs to invite them to keep him company at Monte Cristo. He was taken by his master to Ham to visit Louis Napoleon when a prisoner there. The latter wished to keep Pritchard, but counted without the intelligence of the animal in asking Dumas before his face to leave him behind. The pointer set up a howl so piteous that the governor of the prison withdrew the authorization he had given his captive to retain him.”