Whittier has also a pet cow, favorite and favored, which puts up her handsome head for an expected caress.  The kindly hearted old poet, so full of tenderness for all created things, told me that years when nuts were scarce he would put beech nuts and acorns here and there as he walked over his farm, to cheer the squirrels by an unexpected find.

Miss Mitford’s tribute to her defunct doggie shows to what a degree of imbecility an old maid may carry fondness for her pets, but it is pathetically amusing.

“My own darling Mossy’s hair, cut off after he was dead by dear Drum, August 22, 1819.  He was the greatest darling that ever lived (son of Maria and Mr. Webb’s ‘Ruler,’ a famous dog given him by Lord Rivers), and was, when he died, about seven or eight years old.  He was a large black dog, of the largest and strongest kind of greyhounds; very fast and honest, and resolute past example; an excellent killer of hares, and a most magnificent and noble-looking creature.  His coat was of the finest and most glossy black, with no white, except a very little under his feet (pretty white shoe linings I used to call them)—­a little beautiful white spot, quite small, in the very middle of his neck, between his chin and his breast—­and a white mark on his bosom.  His face was singularly beautiful; the finest black eyes, very bright, and yet sweet, and fond, and tender—­eyes that seemed to speak; a beautiful, complacent mouth, which used sometimes to show one of the long white teeth at the side; a jet black nose; a brow which was bent and flexible, like Mr. Fox’s, and gave great sweetness and expression, and a look of thought to his dear face.  There never was such a dog!  His temper was, beyond comparison, the sweetest ever known.  Nobody ever saw him out of humor.  And his sagacity was equal to his temper.  Thank God, he went off without suffering.  He must have died in a moment.  I thought I should have broken my heart when I came home and found what had happened.  I shall miss him every moment of my life; I have missed him every instant to-day—­so have Drum and Granny.  He was laid out last night in the stable, and this morning we buried him in the middle plantation on the house side of the fence, in the flowery corner, between the fence and Lord Shrewsbury’s fields.  We covered his dear body with flowers; every flower in the garden. Everybody loved him; ‘dear saint,’ as I used to call him, and as I do not doubt he now is!! No human being was ever so faithful, so gentle, so generous, and so fond!  I shall never love anything half so well.

“It will always be pleasant to me to remember that I never teased him by petting other things, and that everything I had he shared.  He always ate half my breakfast, and the very day before he died I fed him all the morning with filberts.” (There may have been a connection between the filberts and the funeral.)