During the war between Augustus Cæsar and Marc Antony, when all the world stood wondering and uncertain which way Fortune would incline herself, a poor man at Rome, in order to be prepared for making, in either event, a bold hit for his own advancement, had recourse to the following ingenious expedient. He applied himself to the training of two crows with such diligence, that he brought them the length of pronouncing with great distinctness, the one a salutation to Cæsar, and the other a salutation to Antony. When Augustus returned conqueror, the man went out to meet him with the crow suited to the occasion perched on his fist, and every now and then it kept exclaiming, “Salve, Cæsar, Victor Imperator!” “Hail, Cæsar, Conqueror and Emperor!” Augustus, greatly struck and delighted with so novel a circumstance, purchased the bird of the man for a sum which immediately raised him into opulence.
Anecdote IX.
One Sunday evening, five choristers were walking on the banks of a river; after some time, being tired with walking, they sat down on the grass, and began to sing an anthem. The field on which they sat was terminated at one extremity by a wood, out of which, as they were singing, they observed a hare to pass with great swiftness towards the place where they were sitting, and to stop at about twenty yards’ distance from them. She appeared highly delighted with the harmony of the music, often turning up the side of her head to listen with more facility. As soon as the harmonious sound was over, the hare returned slowly towards the wood; when she had nearly reached the end of the field, the choristers began the same piece again; at which the hare stopped, turned round, and came swiftly back to about the same distance as before, where she seemed to listen with rapture and delight, till they had finished the anthem, when she returned again by a slow pace up the field, and entered the wood.
