there will tell you that he has seen a wooden figure playing at chess;
why, therefore, should the most sagacious of all the brutes not learn
knitting?"

"I fear, in speaking so highly of the dog," replied Mrs. Wolston, "you
are doing injustice to other animals. Marvellous instances of
sagacity, gratitude, and affection, have been shown by other brutes
beside the dog. A horse of Caligula's was elevated to the dignified
office of consul."

"Yes, and talking of the affection of animals," observed Ernest, "puts
me in mind of an anecdote related by Aulus Gellius. It seems that a
little boy, the son of a fisher man, who had to go from Baiæ to his
school at Puzzoli, used to stop at the same hour each day on the brink
of the Lucrine lake. Here he often threw a bit of his breakfast to a
Dolphin that he called Simon, and if the creature was not waiting for
him when he arrived, he had only to pronounce this name, and it
instantly appeared."

"Nothing very wonderful in that," said Jack; "the common gudgeon,
which is the stupidest fish to be found in fresh water, would do that
much."

"Yes; but listen a moment. The dolphin, after having received his
pittance, presented his back to the boy, after having tacked in all
his spines and prickles as well as he could, and carried him right
across the lake, thus saving the little fellow a long roundabout walk;
and not only that, but after school hours it was waiting to carry him
back again. This continued almost daily for a year or two; but at last
the boy died, and the dolphin, after waiting day after day for his