The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 25, November, 1859

With this I discharged a barrel of my revolver above his head, which, like my voice in my efforts at hallooing, sounded only as a faint echo of itself, but, nevertheless, proved sufficient to give his dormant faculties a shock. He started up, and, though still but half-conscious, took the helm and gave it the direction I bade him.

From him I hastened to the engineer, whom I found in a like state of insensibility. I succeeded in arousing him; but it was necessary that he should be made to comprehend the difficulties of our situation,—that our craft, water-logged as it were, would float forever where she was, for all anybody could say to the contrary, until forced down by the power of the engine alone to lower and life-giving atmospheric planes. To get him to understand this was not so easy. But I succeeded in part, and, in my anxiety for my friends, rushed below to look after their condition.

As I anticipated, I found every one of them in a state of incipient asphyxia. But the "Flying Cloud" was already descending into denser air. Oxygen and pressure were performing their mystic work; and within half an hour I had the pleasure of seeing them all restored to consciousness and rapidly returning strength. But the renewed lights exposed a sight almost too frightful to mention. Every man of us was crimson from escaped blood, which seemed to have oozed forth, like a pale-red dew, from every pore of our bodies.

Messrs. Bonflon and De Aëry, when they came to realize the danger from which we had so narrowly escaped, were nearly dumb with horror. The lively Frenchman exhibited a sensibility which the extremity of his single peril, a day or two before, had failed to call up. He wept aloud. Mr. Bonflon was circumspect and thoughtful. He did not lose his Yankee balance; but both of them, each in his own way, overwhelmed me with expressions of obligation.

But the dangers of this dreadful night—a night which can never pass from my recollection—were not yet over. We were all gathered in the main cabin, congratulating each other, next after our escape, on our rapidly returning strength,—happy in the thought that our trip out, though sprinkled with danger, was so near a prosperous completion, and almost momently expecting to hear the stroke of the bell which should announce to us that the red light to designate our place of landing was in sight, when, instead of the silver ring of this messenger of peace, we were startled and horrified by an alarm of fire.

Bonflon and De Aëry rushed to the engine-room. A cloud of smoke poured out from the door by which they disappeared. They were gone only for a moment; for no man could remain in the hell of flames and vapors into which they ventured and live. They came out dragging with them the half-suffocated, scorched, and blazing engineer. How the accident occurred, it was impossible to divine and useless to inquire. Closing the door tightly after them to confine the flames, where confinement, except for the briefest period, among matter so combustible, and partitions scarcely more formidable than those of a paper bandbox, was clearly impossible, they threw the burning engineer into our arms, and themselves took the management of the craft.

De Aëry, in this crisis, rose from the man to the hero, almost to a demigod. His orders rung through the startled air clear and round like the voice of a golden bell. Bonflon seconded him with coolness and decision. With us a moment sufficed to extinguish the burning garments of the engineer; but by that time the flames had burst from the engine-room, and that part of the beautiful boat was a ragged, crackling ruin.

Fleeing to the upper deck, and taking refuge in the bow, we became sensible that we were descending through the air with frightful rapidity. When the accident occurred, we were already at a low level, on the look-out for the signal at our station. This circumstance was in our favor, if anything could be, when a danger so imminent and dreadful was pressing. Land, like a hazy shadow, was just discoverable in the dim distance below us; and oh for one foot of it as a place of rest! But if it were possible to escape the flames, it was clear enough that we must be dashed in pieces against the solid earth.

De Aëry was now the only one remaining in the stern. He was exposed to great peril, but refused to quit his post while it remained possible to control in any degree the motions of the vessel. The flames played about him without shaking his courage or his coolness, and broke through upon the upper deck and separated him from us with a seething hedge and whirlpool of fire. We lost sight of him, and supposed he had perished, when suddenly his voice, issuing from the midst of the furnace, rung on our ears like a trumpet.

"Up the ropes! quit the ship, or you die, every man of you!" he shouted; and at the same time we discovered him emerging from the flames and smoke, and ascending the network which enveloped the balloon and connected it with the ship. We followed his example; some of our number—the more timid or the more daring, it would be difficult to say which—continuing the ascent until they had reached the upper surface of the gas-chamber, and placed its entire fragile bulk between them and the hazard they most dreaded.

The momentary refuge afforded by these upper works was scarcely attained, when the bow, where we had stood but a minute before, and the whole hull of the "Flying Cloud" with it, blended together in one mass of surging fire. The appearance in the heavens of this strange sight, to a watcher at some rancho, or in the not distant city of San Francisco, if such there were, must have afforded a more vivid illustration of the fall of a blazing star or meteoric wonder than astronomer has ever put on record.

But I delay the catastrophe. Land and water soon became distinguishable from each other beneath us, and hills from valleys, and forests from bare plains. There was little wind, except the fierce currents rushing upward, produced by the heat of our own conflagration. This, for the time, subdued everything to itself, and, as we approached the ground, served by its direction to modify the fury of our descent. The denser lower atmosphere also contributed to the same end; and, most fortunately, when we reached the earth, and the collision came, we struck in water instead of on the land.

Still, the collision was a fierce one. With the mass of fire between us and the ground directly below, blinded by the smoke and half suffocated by the heat, we were not conscious of the good fortune that awaited us, until, with a swoop and a plunge, we found ourselves submerged, and, with an equal velocity, immediately thrown back again by the buoyant force of the balloon into the open air. The flood of fire in which we had descended was instantly extinguished; and we awoke to a sense of our possible safety in darkness rendered doubly profound by the contrast.

Daylight was near at hand. By a careful adjustment of our weights we kept the balloon from rolling, and sustained ourselves above the water among the netting. As morning came, we discovered we had landed in a small lake, hardly large enough to be dignified with the name, but obviously of considerable depth. The shore was not distant: and as the day was sultry, with a little grateful labor at swimming and towing, on the part of a few of us, we soon reached it. There we examined into each other's condition. Scarce one of us but was able to show damage by fire, or from too rough contact with the fragments of the "Flying Cloud," which preceded us in our plunge into the lake. But no bones were broken, and no one badly flayed. The case of the engineer was the worst; but even he was able to keep upon his feet, and pronounced in no danger.

No hut or field or sign of inhabitants was to be seen. With mixed feelings, in which, for the present at least, the sense of personal safety triumphed over all regrets, even with Messrs. Bonflon and De Aëry, at the shipwreck of so many brilliant hopes, we scuttled that part of our craft still afloat, and sunk it in the lake; and with weary footsteps, but unobstructed with baggage, as near as we could determine by the aid of a compass, took the direction toward San Francisco. A couple of hours brought us to the rancho of Señor José Dianza, who received us as a band of pilgrims over the Plains, who, at the hands of robbers and the elements, had lost everything but life, and helped us on to the city of the land of gold.

It is needless to detain the reader with the particulars of our return. They were such only as occur to thousands in the rough and circuitous transit between San Francisco and New York. We came home by the Isthmus route, and in ships that ploughed the honest waves. We explained our absence to our disturbed families and friends as best we might; and some will remember—and if they do not, they can refresh their recollection by a reference to the public prints—that several missing gentlemen of some importance in the world, about that time, suddenly reappeared upon the stage of action.

We resolved that the whole affair in which we had been engaged should remain forever buried in oblivion. But time and reflection have wrought a change with me, though I shall not presume to disturb the veil which covers my associates. I have come to consider the adventure quite too good to be lost, and the experiment in aerial navigation, which came so near proving successful, of too much importance to science to be suppressed. Hence, conquering my repugnance, I have decided, on my own responsibility, to give these interesting and valuable particulars to the world.

* * * * *

DOG-TALK

Exactly,—Dog-Talk. And I sit down to write some of it out, in the middle of this pleasant month of May, lest, peradventure, if I postpone my task for a few weeks longer, I may fall in with my memories some time in the raging days of the dog-star, when the overwhelming sense of dog, in which, for the true working out of these memories, I must first dip my mind, may debar me from enjoying to the fullest extent the bounteous tap of Croton water which tinkles with such rivulet chiming from the silver (German) faucet into the marble (wash-hand) basin with which one side of my apartment is adorned. Hydrophobia is one thing, and hydrophobiaephobia is another.

Although but the mid-time of May, as I have said, the thermometer is reported at something not far short of eighty degrees, and that in as much shade as can possibly be had in the street in which I write, which is a brick street of New York, with one catalpa-tree in it,—a poor, vegetable fakir, standing on his one leg at a distance of about three blocks from "our corner," and sprawling out all round with his shrivelled hands, as if to catch the passing robe of some rambling breath of fresh air. With a trustful hope that this statement may be accepted in extenuation of the inevitable platitudinism down the gently inclined plane of which I feel myself impelled to slide into my memories, I will endeavor to bring some of the latter to the surface.

I fancy it has been already remarked by writers,—though that will not prevent me from repeating it,—that, of all the four-footed friends of man, none, not even that corpulent chap, Elephant, has contributed more voluminously to the literature of anecdote than that first-rate fellow, Dog. Let me also take the liberty of recalling, in corroboration of others who have previously drawn attention to the same fact, that from the earliest ages we trace Dog as the companion, friend, and ally of him whom alone he condescends to acknowledge as master, to accept as tutor, and to sympathize with in the spirit of hostility to obnoxious things, and in attachment to the sports of the field. It can hardly be necessary for me to explain that I allude to Man.

Above all other created things, Man is the one that laughs,—a remark, so far the present writer is aware, entirely original, and vastly more indicative of genius than the best of the platitudes incidentally referred to above. Some of the lower animals weep. The deer, for instance, has been observed to shed tears in the extremity of terror, and the hard-pressed hare cries like an ill-regulated child; but not one of them indicates any emotion analogous to the laughter of Man, excepting Dog. True it is, that we hear of a "horse-laugh." There is a beast, too, called the "laughing hyena," and a dismal beast he is. Among the feathered tribes there flourishes an individual named the "laughing falcon." From inanimate creation the poet has evoked for us "Minni Haha," or the "laughing water"; and the expression, "it would make a cat laugh," is frequently made use of in reference to anything very ridiculous. But in every one of these cases of so-called laughing things, the sound only of the laughter is there,—the sentiment is wanting. Not so with Dog, who, when the spirit of fun moves him, smiles beamingly with his eyes, giggles manifestly with his chops, or laughs uproariously with his tail, according as the occasion demands.

Yet, with all his wonderful gifts of intellectual ability, we cannot concede to Dog the possession of the supereminent faculty called reason,—the faculty which, as an eminent writer—Tupper, I think—remarks, places Man immeasurably above all the other animals stationed so much lower down, and by virtue of which he is lord and master of them all, leading Behemoth over the land with a ring in his nose, and towing Leviathan across the waters with a harpoon in his ribs. Fine as the line may appear which separates instinct from the divine gift of reason, we must see that progress, an essential consequence of the latter, is denied to the former. It is quite possible that the dogs which accompanied the first mariner in the first argosy were educated to fetch and carry, or were even so far accomplished as to sit up and beg; and it is but little more their descendants can do at the present day. But what of Man, who weathered safely the storm of storms in that same Ark? Compare that venerated bark, as imagined by us from traditionary description, with the least eligible of the ferry-boats which scud across our crowded rivers, and we have answer enough for the present, so far as progress is concerned.

Well, if Dog has never invented so much even as a patent rat-trap,—a thing, you see, that might have saved him some labor,—if he persists in disregarding the majesty of Fashion, and continues to move about in society with the same kind of coat on his back as that worn by his first ancestor, hatless, disaffected of shoes, and totally obtuse to the amenity of an umbrella,—if, in fact, his only approach to humanity, as distinguished by apparel, is his occasional adoption of a collar precisely similar in general effect to those in which Fashion, empress of Broadway and of a great many other ways, condemns her wretched votaries to partial strangulation,—well, say I again, in spite of all this, Dog is prime company. Intimately associated as I have been from earliest boyhood with many excellent fellows of the family, from social communion with which I am at present debarred only by the direful necessity of dwelling in lodgings,—a necessity which, if distasteful to Man, to Dog, oh, how fatal!—bound, I may say, as I was for years, not by straps and chains only, but by ties of confident friendship also, to canine comrades possessing the purest elements of worth and humor, it is to me a task not altogether devoid of interest to fall back on such memories as may enable me to chronicle a few reminiscences of the nobilities and eccentricities of the race.

Before I discourse of individual dogs of the present century, however, with whom I have had the pleasure of being personally acquainted, let me reproduce the following short tale of a dog from an old French volume,—a tome fittingly adorned with ears of that noble animal innumerable.

Persimel St. Remi was a gentleman of fortune, whose income was derived principally from large rented farms, the dues arising from which he sometimes collected himself, in preference to intrusting that important duty to a steward or agent. On his excursions for that purpose, he was generally accompanied by a favorite little spaniel, of a kind too small to be of any service to him as an escort, but inestimable for his qualities as a companion. One day M. St. Remi had ridden a long way to collect certain sums of money due him in arrears of rent, but which he had little expectation of being able to obtain without further trouble. To his agreeable surprise, however, his tenants paid him the whole arrears,—an event so unexpected that he could not conceal his exultation as he clinked the heavy bag of money on the pommel of his saddle, when cordially taking leave of his farmers. Merle—that was the little dog's name—was equally delighted; for his moods were always regulated by those of his master,—such is the mysterious sympathy between Dog and us; and ever as his master laughed cheerily to the chink of the gold, on his homeward ride, Merle barked and bounded alongside of him, clearly understanding that gold is a thing to be laughed with and not at, and that it is no laughing matter to be without it. This is what the old French writer asserts respecting the inward sentiments of that small dog. How he arrived at a knowledge of them, I know not, nor is it any business of mine. Well, Persimel St. Remi galloped on and on, until they reached the way-side well about halfway home,—the old stone trough, with the water sparkling into it from the grotesque spout carved out of the rock. Here he pulled bridle to water his horse, refreshed him further by slackening the girths of the saddle, and, unstrapping the bag of gold which was attached to the holsters, he placed it by his side on the rock, while he splashed his hands and face in the cool water. By-and-by he drew up the girths, mounted his horse dreamily, for he was a man of contemplative moods, and rode away from the way-side well, forgetful of his treasure, which lay temptingly on the flat rock, ready to the hand of the first comer. Not so his faithful dog, who, having in vain tried to lift the bag, which was too heavy for him, ran swiftly after the rider, whose attention he strove to arouse by barking violently, and careering round and round the horse when he slackened his pace. Failing thus to attract notice, he went so far in his zeal as to bite the horse pretty severely in the fetlock, which caused him to swerve on one side, and wake up his master to a vague sense of something wrong, the first idea that occurred to him being that his dog had gone mad. Cases of hydrophobia had lately occurred in the neighborhood, and St. Remi was convinced of the seizure by it of his poor dog when they reached the brook which flowed across the road. Instead of luxuriating and drinking in this, as he usually did, the spaniel circled away to where it narrowed, and leaped across it in his run. Then St. Remi, drawing a pistol from his holsters, fired at and shot his faithful companion, averting his eyes as he touched the fatal trigger, and galloping rapidly away from the death-cry that smote upon his ear; and, as he dashed the spurs into his reeking horse, he invoked maledictions on the money which was the cause of this unfortunate journey. The money! but where was it? Suddenly he pulled up his harassed steed, and the unhappy truth flashed upon him: he had left his treasure by the way-side well, and had shot his faithful dog for trying to remind him of it. Riding back to the well with mad speed, he found by traces of blood upon the path that the poor spaniel had dragged himself thither again to guard his master's gold to the last. There he found him, stretched out beside the bag of money, with just strength enough left to raise his head towards his master, with a look of forgiveness, ere he died.

The chronicler does not state what M. St. Remi did with all that money,—though we may be safe in supposing that he very exactly knew; but we would fain hope that he expended a moiety of it in founding a retreat for decayed dogs, as a monument to the poor little spaniel so faithful to him in life and in death.

Sporting dogs,—the setter, the pointer, the fox-hound, and all the several varieties of hound, have had their historians, from Dame Juliana Berners to Peter Beckford, and that more recent Peter whose patronymic was Hawker; while, on our side of the Atlantic, the late "Frank Forester" has reduced kennel-practice to a system from which the Nimrod of the ramrod may not profitably depart. Apart from history, however, and from didactic argument, the individual trails of dogs remarkable in their day have but too rarely been recorded. Certainly the shepherd's colley has been admirably individualized by the Ettrick Shepherd; but many a terrier—"a fellow of infinite fancy"—has passed through the world's worry without ever seeing his name in print,—unless, indeed, he happened to have fallen among thieves, and found himself lamp-posted accordingly,—has passed the grizzle-muzzle period of doghood unbiographied, and gone down to his last burrow unsung.

Among the regrets with which we are saddled for our omissions, not the least of mine is now galling me for having neglected to reduce to writing, on the spot, curious facts which fell under my immediate notice in the course of many years' companionship with a somewhat miscellaneous assortment of canine friends,—

"The little dogs and all,
Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart."

Nevertheless, I will endeavor to bring together in this paper such stray reminiscences of doggery in general as may occur to me while I write, illustrating the subject, as I proceed, with occasional passages from the careers, of humble, but eccentric individuals of the race.

Extinction has been the fate of some varieties of the dog, which have been either superseded by the progress of machinery, or have gone to decay in consequence of the annihilation of the animals for the chase of which they were maintained. When there were wolves in the mosses and caverns of Ireland, for example, there were wolf-dogs to hunt them. The last wolf of that country—and he was a wonder, from the then rarity of the animal—was killed about one hundred and fifty years ago; and although the breed of hound then known as the Irish wolf-dog—one of the largest, noblest, and most courageous of the canine race—was kept up to some extent for nearly a century later, we doubt much whether a single pure specimen of the variety is now in existence; unless, indeed, it may so happen that some ultimus Romanorum of the tribe still licks his patrician chops in the kennels of the Marquis of Sligo, in the possession of which family the last litter was many years ago supposed to be.

Reverting to times when I was a boy, I remember me of a generation of bandy-legged, foxy little curs, long of body, short of limb, tight of skin, and "scant of breath," which were regarded as the legitimate descendants of a superseded class,—the Turnspit of good old times. The daily round of duty of that useful aide-de-cuisine transpired in the revolution of a wheel, along the monotonous journey of which he cantered, as a squirrel does in his rolling cage, keeping in motion, by his professional exertions, the wheels and spinners of the spit upon which the joint was kept turning before the fire. The tight skin of this ugly dog was evidently a provision of Nature to secure him from entanglement with the machinery amid which his business was conducted. Had a Scotch terrier, for instance, whiskered and plumed, descended from his own more aristocratic circle to disport himself in that where turnspit was the principal mover,—the kitchen-wheel,—he might have found himself cogged, and caught up, and spitted, and associated promiscuously with leg of mutton as roasted hare; in which capacity he might eventually have been eaten with currant-jelly and considerable relish, receiving more honor, perhaps, "in that connection," than had ever in his lifetime been lavished on him as a member of society.

But Turnspit's profession is a thing of the past, his very existence a myth. The roasting-jack, with a wind-up weight by which the spit was turned, cut him out first of all; other inventions further diminished his importance. But the tea-kettle—which he somewhat resembled in figure, by-the-by—scalded him clean off the face of creation; for the bright steam-engine, attached nowadays to the kitchens of our principal hotels, has given a new turn to affairs, ruling the roast after a fashion that sets back old Turnspit into the remotest corner under the backstairs of the Dark Ages. I have alluded to his alleged descendants, as pointed out to my observation in boyhood; but they were an effete and degenerate race, purposeless, and wallowing much with the pigs, whom their grandsires would have recognized only to roast.

In one instance only, and that on this side of the Atlantic, do I remember having been introduced to any dog whose profession was at all analogous to that of the turnspit of other days. Falling into conversation with an old Dutch-Yankee farmer, in a remote and very rural district, I made some remarks about his dog, which was a very large, heavy one, of that no-particular-kind happily classified by the comprehensive natural philosophers of the barn-floor as "yellow dog." Farmer assured me that this fine fellow—whose name I am ashamed to say I have forgotten—did all the churning of the farm-dairy by imparting his motive power to a wheel. This piece of ingenuity, Farmer informed me, was originally and exclusively an inspiration from the intellect which animated his, Farmer's, proper clod; nor was he greatly exhilarated when I narrated to him the tradition of the turnspit, whose memory, I regret to record, he spurned as that of a "mean cuss," destitute of that poetry which dwelleth in the pastoral associations of the dairy.

Although not strictly in connection with the subject of this article, I will here relate a story told to me, on the same occasion, by that old farmer, because it struck me as being rather a good one, and is not particularly long.

Seeing that I took notice of a smock-frocked rustic employed in foddering the cattle,—a rustic whose legs and accent were to me exclusively reminiscent of the pleasant roads and lanes of cheery Somersetshire,—Farmer informed me that he was a newish importation, having made his appearance about there early in the previous winter. While snow, of such quality and in such quantity as they have it in that region, was yet a novelty to the bumpkin, he was dispatched on horseback, one day, to the neighboring village, strict instructions being given him to ride carefully in the middle of the track, as, treading in the deep snow, the horse might "ball,"—an expression applied to taking up snow in the hollow of the hoof, which causes the animal to stumble. An unusually long time elapsed before the messenger made his appearance from his mission, and then he was seen making his way painfully through the snow, leading the horse after him by the bridle.

"What's wrong now?" inquired Farmer, as he glanced at the animal's knees; "been down, I guess; did Old Horse ball?"

"Noa," replied Bumpkin, "a didn't joost bawl, but a groonted consoomedly every toime a coom down. Oi thowt a wur a-gwoan to bawl the last toime we coom down together, and zo oi joost stayed down and walked 'im whoam."

When doggy men beyond ocean talk about a terrier, they usually pronounce it tarrier, and not terrier, as we mostly call him on this bank of the Atlantic. There is no authority for the former pronunciation, that I know of, beyond usage, which, however, is much taken as a standard in England. Thus, an English merchant will talk to you about his clarks, an American about his clurks. The French word terrier—derived, of course, from terre—signifies not only the dog, but a burrow in the earth; a kind of retreat in which such dogs are supposed to pass a portion of their existence, occupied in the subterrene branches of the chase. It means, also, a land-roll or register. In Lower Canada, which is essentially France, I recollect the label, "Papier Terrier," upon the door of a public-land-office. A friend of mine, clandestinely and under cover of darkness, removed the label, substituting for it a scurrilous one setting forth "Pasteboard Poodle," an announcement which did not appear to convey any particular idea whatever to the unsettled mind of the haggard provincial chef du bureau, as it flashed upon him next morning in the light of the glad young autumn day. But, reverting to pronunciation, tare-ier would, of course, more correctly reverberate the sound of the French original than either of the other usages, while it would possess the advantage of conveying a suggestion of that proclivity for tearing, so characteristic of the animal designated by the term. On this important question the learned philologists wrangle. For my part, I stick to tarrier, which comes "oncommon handy," as the horse-dealer hinted, when reproved by the Cambridge student for reducing a noble animal nearly to the level of a donkey by calling him "an 'oss."

And of all the terrier tribe, there is no quainter little fellow than he of the Island of Skye,—known to his friends and admirers as the "Skye dog." This little animal, which, in length of spine, shortness of legs, wildness of hair, and litheness of movement, resembles one of those long, hirsute caterpillars oft-times to be observed by the happy rambler in the country, as it promenades across his path, possesses many distinctive traits, which separate him, in a manner, from Dog in general, assimilating him somewhat, indeed, to the ferce, which find in rapine and carnage the subsistence which Nature evidently has not intended that they should realize in communion with man. The peculiar odor of the fox is his, though in a mitigated degree. He loves to make a lair under the bushes by tearing up the turf with his teeth and paws, and to lie in it. He is of a shy and reserved disposition, and usually more lively at night than by day. These are attributes of beasts of prey. Unlike all other members of the terrier family, he cares nothing about rats. He will sit down and bark in a tone of contempt at one turned out before him in a close passage or room, declining, in fact, to recognize rats as game, unless entered at them while very young. I speak only of the pure, unmixed Isle-of-Skye dog, or "tassel terrier," as he is sometimes called by rabbit-hunters,—a breed difficult to obtain in perfection, and one which is particularly scarce in this country. The proper game or quarry of this animal is the otter, which he does not hesitate to follow into his very burrow in the river-banks; nor is he afraid to attack one nearly double his size.

Having, time after time, possessed several of these dogs, verified as being derived from the best stock on the island, from which their parents—who understood no language but Gaelic—were brought direct, I have noted some of their odd, whimsical ways, a few of which I will illustrate, taking for my exponent one very remarkable little fellow who was a genuine type of his kind.

This animal was one of the smallest of his family, and of a color uncommon among them; for they are mostly either of a yellowish dun, or of that slaty mouse-color known among dog-fanciers as "blue,"—a tint, by the way, particularly appropriate for a dog of Skye. Sometimes they are black; but Sambo, better known to his familiars as Sam, was of a sooty brindle, with a very dark muzzle, and eyes burning out like black stars from the cloud of shaggy hair that mantled upon his brow. Next to the shortness of his legs, the length of his body was one of the most remarkable physical freaks I remember to have observed; neither of these attributes, however, having a chance of notice in comparison with the quantity and denseness of his long, soft hair,—for the coat of a true Skye dog is fleecy, rather than wiry. It was the joint result of the shortness of his legs and the length of his beard that the fatter appendage continually swept the ground,—an inconvenience which I once undertook to remedy by trimming it off short with scissors. No Turk could have more indignantly resented the process than did that small quadruped,—his Celtic feelings being so severely wounded by it, in fact, that he abstained from sustenance for three days, putting himself into moral sackcloth and ashes for that period by retiring into his penitential cell under a chest of drawers.

When quite a pup, hardly half-grown, he played a trick unaccountable to me at this day as it was then. Sam had the run of the house, and he availed himself of it. On going into the breakfast-room, one morning early, I observed a singular phenomenon in connection with a large, cold round of beef, which was the pièce de résistance on the table. It was curious to behold a round of cold beef with a tail, which it wagged, and feathered, and beckoned with, as if to say, "Come, eat me." The tail was the tail of Sam, whose body was concealed far down in the interior of the tower of beef, into which he had cut his way with great perseverance and success. But the puzzle was, how he got there; for there was no chair within reach of the table, and he was much too small to have jumped up on it; while the theory of the servant, who propounded that he must have climbed up by the table-cloth, tooth over claw, was wild, and simply entitled to the contempt of any person aware of the difference between dog and cat. There is but one acceptable theory on the subject,—that he was down in the caverns of the beef, tail and all, before it was brought up-stairs, and so escaped notice.

Early in life, he contracted—from evil association, perhaps—a vulgar trick of running after carriages and barking at the horses' heels, a trick of which I in vain tried to break him. Once, when he was about a year old, I took him up beside me into a high calèche, in which we were going some distance. The moment the horse started, Sam jumped out to have a bark at his heels, when, to my horror, the wheel of the vehicle, in which there were three of us, went right over the middle of his body, cutting him, apparently, in two; but he was up in a second, and barking at heels and wheels for half a mile before we could pull up and get him in again. This accident appeared to decide him in the choice of a profession, for he devoted himself energetically, from that hour, to the pursuit and baying-at of all manner of wheeled things propelled by horse-power.

A rat he would never touch, although I introduced him to one before he was a year old; he manifested neither fear of the vermin, nor surprise at it, but simply took no interest in it. He had much pleasure in worrying cats; but that was owing, I fancy, to a sad discomfiture he once met with from one. Walking through a suburb one day, with Sammy trotting before me in dreamy mood, to which he was much given, a small, but remarkably severe cat made a sudden and very fierce dash at him from a cottage-door, taking him so completely aback, that he tumbled, head over tail, into a deep, dirty pool of green, stagnant water, such as is usually to be seen in the pleasure-grounds environing a suburbo-Hibernian shanty. His appearance, on emerging from that cesspool, was the reverse of majestic; but the incident gave him such an idea on the subject of cats, that he always persecuted them remorselessly from that day; nor did he ever again walk through a suburb in any other frame of mind than a particularly wide-awake one, and with his tail up.

These dogs are curiously sensitive about their dignity, and sometimes do not recover their elasticity of spirits for several days after having undergone a process of correction. I recollect a singular instance of this sensitiveness displayed by Sambo, in which he also manifested a kind of inferential power wonderfully akin to reason.

One morning, a tumult of dogs in the street drew him to the window, out of which he looked by jumping on a chair, just as a troop of "curs of low degree" tore past after a rather genteel-looking dog with a kettle tied to his tail. They whirled rapidly by in a turmoil of dust, and clink, and cur-dog yelp, but not so rapidly as to prevent Sam from perceiving the terrible degradation to which a gentleman-dog had been subjected. The sight had a visible effect on his spirits, for he immediately became quite depressed as to tail and mind, a condition which influenced him for a day or two, after which he again appeared comparatively cheerful, and took his place in society with his accustomed cautious conviviality. About a month after this, he was seen coming very slowly along a lane which led up to the back of the house,—a course hardly ever taken by him, as he was a parlor-dog, and considered himself entitled to the freedom of the hall-door. Creeping on in the shadow of the wall, he arrived with a very crest-fallen aspect at the kitchen-door, where the cause of his ignominious approach was made manifest to those who were watching him. He had a kettle tied to his tail. Now this animal must surely have argued in his own mind, that running away with a tin kettle is a sure way of attracting undesirable notice; also, that proceeding through a public thoroughfare with such an appendage is injudicious, and likely to result in trouble. The circumstance of the runaway dog and the tumult after him had left its impression upon him; and, travelling on his experience, he rightly judged that an unpleasant affair of the kind might best be hushed up by quietly making one's way home through back-lanes and the kitchen-door.

Skye terriers, when young, are apt to have a bad trick of gnawing and tearing up articles of wearing apparel, particularly slippers, gaiters, and such other things as are handy to toss up and catch. The fellow I am writing about, when very young, destroyed sundry items of my property in that way. He occupied a buffalo-robe in my room, and I heard him very busy one night about something, but did not pay much attention to it, as he was often lively at night. In the morning, however, on looking for a pair of leather gaiters, I recognized the remains of them, after much investigation, in a mass of pulp, to which they had been reduced by the little beast as completely as they could have been by the most experienced boa-constrictor. This habit I soon broke him of, by chastising him with the remnants of the worried article, when there were any left of substance sufficient to weave into a scourge; nor did he ever recur to it when grown up, except once, evidencing upon that occasion a remarkable instance of hereditary instinct.