I remember how, when going to and from school, a long journey of four hundred miles, in days when such a journey implied travel by sea as well as by land, I used to know instantly the gentlemen or the railway officials to whom I might apply for advice or information.  I think that this intuitive perception of character is blunted in after years.  A man is often mistaken in his first impression of man or woman; a boy hardly ever.  And a boy not only knows at once whether a human being is amiable or the reverse, he knows also whether the human being is wise or foolish.  In particular, he knows at once whether the human being always means what he says, or says a great deal more than he means.  Inferior animals learn some lessons quickly.  A dog once thrashed for some offence knows quite well not to repeat it.  A horse turns for the first time down the avenue to a house where he is well fed and cared for; next week, or next month, you pass that gate, and though the horse has been long taught to submit his will to yours, you can easily see that he knows the place again, and that he would like to go back to the stable with which, in his poor, dull, narrow mind, there are pleasant associations.  I would give a good deal to know what a horse is thinking about.  There is something very curious and very touching about the limited intelligence and the imperfect knowledge of that immaterial principle in which the immaterial does not imply the immortal.  And yet, if we are to rest the doctrine of a future life in any degree upon the necessity of compensation for the sufferings and injustice of the present, I think the sight of the cab-horses of any large town might plead for the admission of some quiet world of green grass and shady trees, where there should be no cold, starvation, over-work, or flogging.  Some one has said that the most exquisite material scenery would look very cold and dead in the entire absence of irrational life.  Trees suggest singing-birds; flowers and sunshine make us think of the drowsy bees.  And it is curious to think how the future worlds of various creeds are described as not without their lowly population of animals inferior to man.  We know what the “poor Indian” expects shall bear him company in his humble heaven; and possibly various readers may know some dogs who in certain important respects are very superior to certain men.  You remember how, when a war-chief of the Western prairies was laid by his tribe in his grave, his horse was led to the spot in the funeral procession, and at the instant when the earth was cast upon the dead warrior’s dust, an arrow reached the noble creature’s heart, that in the land of souls the man should find his old friend again.  And though it has something of the grotesque, I think it has more of the pathetic, the aged huntsman of Mr. Assheton Smith desiring to be buried by his master, with two horses and a few couples of dogs, that they might all be ready to start together when they met again far away.