In these little books, I am going to tell you about Minnie, her home, and her pets; and I hope it will teach every boy and every girl who reads them to be kind to animals, as Minnie was. Minnie Lee had a pleasant home. She was an only child, and as her parents loved to please her, they procured every thing which they thought would make her happy. The first pet Minnie had was a beautiful tortoise-shell kitten, which she took in her baby arms and hugged tightly to her bosom. After a time, her father, seeing how much comfort she took with kitty, bought her a spaniel. He already had a large Newfoundland dog; but Mrs. Lee was unwilling to have him come into the house, saying that in summer he drew the flies, and in winter he dirtied her hearth rugs. So Leo, as the great dog was called, was condemned to the barn, while Tiney could rove through the parlors and chambers whenever he pleased.
In Minnie’s seventh year, her father bought her a Shetland pony and a lamb, which he told her was called a South Down—a rare and valuable breed. The little girl now thought her hands quite full; but only the next Christmas, when her uncle came home from sea, he told her he had brought an addition to her pets; and true enough, when his luggage came from town, there was a bag containing a real, live monkey, named Jacko.
These, with the silver-gray parrot, which had been in the family for years, gave Minnie employment from morning till night.
You will wonder, perhaps, that one child should have so many pets; and, indeed, the parrot belonged to her mother; but when I tell you that, though her parents had had six children, she was the only one remaining to them, and that in her infancy she was very sickly, you will not wonder so much. The doctor said that their only hope of bringing her up was to keep her in the open air as much as possible.
“Let her have a run with Leo,” he used to say; or, “Get her a horse, and teach her to ride. That will do her more good than medicine.”
When her father came home from town, if he did not see his little daughter on the lawn, playing with Fidelle, the cat, and Tiney, the dog, he was almost sure to find her in the shed where Jacko’s cage was kept, with Miss Poll perching on her shoulder.
When visitors called and asked to see her, her mother would laugh, as she answered, “I’m sure I don’t know where the child is, she has so many pets.”
Minnie was not allowed to study much in books; indeed, she scarcely knew how to read at all; yet she was not an ignorant child, for her father and mother took great pains to teach her. She knew the names of all the different trees on her father’s place, and of all the flowers in her mother’s garden; but her favorite study was the natural history of beasts and birds; and nothing gave her so much pleasure as to have her father relate anecdotes of their intelligence and sagacity.
He had a large, well-selected library, where were many rare volumes on her favorite subject, illustrated with pictures of different animals. When Mr. Lee could not recall a story as often as she wished, she would take his hand and coax him to the library. Then she would run up the steps to her favorite shelf, and taking down a book almost as large as she could lift, say, playfully, “Now, father, I’m ready for you to read.”
Mrs. Lee often found them sitting together, talking over the wonderful feats of some dog, cat, horse, or monkey, and laughed as she said to her husband, “I believe Minnie comes naturally by her love for animals, for you seem as much interested in the stories as she does.”