Owney recognized this as an upward step in his career, and permitting his independence to assert itself, he would disappear for weeks at a time, returning at last to his adopted home at Albany. The numerous railway tags attached to his collar upon his return showed that he had been travelling with the mails. The route his dogship selected sometimes embraced the four extreme points of the United States, and it was, and is, no uncommon thing to find him wearing such tags as Seattle, Washington, Galveston, Texas, and Tampa, Florida, after one of these trips.
One day, thinking that some mail-pouches for Washington from Albany might contain state secrets to be zealously guarded, he assumed the duty, and thus received his introduction to John Wanamaker, then Postmaster-General. Mr. Wanamaker presented Owney with an elaborate harness, and, proud of his present, the dog made an extended tour. The weight of the tags gathered on this trip at last equalled his own, and, unable to stand the strain, he was compelled to return home and be relieved of his honors.
There are few post-offices and railway lines in the United States and Canada that have not entertained Owney. His Canadian experience was, however, a lamentable one, as a railway collision deprived him of an eye and part of one ear. The North German Lloyd steamers have carried him as passenger a number of times, and the P. and O. steamers took him to the far East during the Chino-Japanese war. During this trip he inspected the mail service of India.
Nothing will induce him to ride in any but the mail-cars, where, curled up on the pouches, he will permit none but the mail-clerks to touch them. These men are very fond of him, and he never lacks for attention. He treats them all impartially, and comes and goes as he wills. As another dog knows a bone, so Owney does a mail-sack, and he will leap aboard the trains with them in the most unexpected places, to be always received with delight. Duly recorded in the history of the United States Post-office, he has its great army of employees, from the highest to the lowest, for his firm friends.
[THE CHILDREN'S HOUR.]
BY EMMA J. GRAY.
"Isn't it blind-man's holiday?" was John's question, as, "betwixt the dark and the daylight," he put his head in his mother's lap, stretching the rest of his long body meanwhile on the tiger-skin rug which lay at her feet.
"Yes;" and immediately Mrs. Colfax laid aside her mending-basket, touching the top pair of socks as she did so, and then followed the words: "I've been busy with those for the last hour. Do you know you are more destructive on socks than your father and three brothers put together?"
"Am I, mother?" and the boy took one of her hands between his own, while she at once ran the fingers of her other hand through his short thick hair, remarking, "that she didn't know where it got its curly tendency from, as none of her family could lay any claim to curls, nor the Colfaxes either."