STRANGE PLAYMATES
A little girl about three years of age was noticed for a number of days going a considerable distance from the house with a piece of bread her mother had given her. This attracted the attention of the mother, who asked the father to follow the child, and find out what she did with the bread. On coming to the child, he found her busy at work feeding several snakes of the species of rattlesnakes called yellow heads. He quickly took her away, went to the house for his gun, and returning, killed two of them at one shot, and another a few days afterward. The child called these snakes as you would call chickens, and when her father told her if she let them come so near her, they would bite her, she replied, “No, they won't bite. They only eat the bread I give them.”
LIV
HONORS TO THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
The people of Athens, when they had finished the temple, called Hecatompedon, set at liberty the beasts of burden that had been chiefly engaged in that work, allowing them to pasture at large, free from all further service. It is said that one of these animals afterward came of its own accord to work, and putting itself at the head of the laboring cattle, marched before them to the citadel. The people were pleased with this action, and said that the animal should be kept at public expense as long as it lived. Many people have shown particular marks of regard in burying animals which they have cherished and been fond of. The graves of Cimon's mares, with which he thrice conquered at the Olympic games, are still to be seen near his own tomb. Xanthippus, whose dog swam by the side of his galley to Salamis, when the Athenians were forced to abandon their city, afterward buried it with great pomp upon a promontory, which to this day is called the Dog's Grave. In Pliny, we have an amusing account of a superb funeral ceremony, which took place during the reign of Claudius; in which the illustrious departed was no other than a crow, so celebrated for its talents and address, that it was looked upon as a sort of public property. Its death was felt as a national loss; the man who killed it was condemned to expiate the crime with his own life; and nothing less than a public funeral could, as it was thought, do justice to its memory. The remains of the bird were laid on a bier, which was borne by two slaves; musicians went before it, playing mournful airs; and a great crowd of people of all ages and conditions, brought up the rear of the melancholy procession.
