He always had much to say of animals as well as of men, and there were certain dogs and horses he had met and known intimately which it was specially interesting to him to remember and picture.  There was a particular dog in Washington which he was never tired of delineating.  The first night Dickens read in the Capital this dog attracted his attention.  “He came into the hall by himself,” said he, “got a good place before the reading began, and paid strict attention throughout.  He came the second night, and was ignominiously shown out by one of the check-takers.  On the third night he appeared again with another dog, which he had evidently promised to pass in free; but you see,” continued Dickens, “upon the imposition being unmasked, the other dog apologized by a howl and withdrew.  His intentions, no doubt, were of the best, but he afterwards rose to explain outside, with such inconvenient eloquence to the reader and his audience, that they were obliged to put him down stairs.”

He was such a firm believer in the mental faculties of animals, that it would have gone hard with a companion with whom he was talking, if a doubt were thrown, however inadvertently, on the mental intelligence of any four-footed friend that chanced to be at the time the subject of conversation.  All animals which he took under his especial patronage seemed to have a marked affection for him.  Quite a colony of dogs has always been a feature at Gad’s Hill.

In many walks and talks with Dickens, his conversation, now, alas! so imperfectly recalled, frequently ran on the habits of birds, the raven, of course, interesting him particularly.  He always liked to have a raven hopping about his grounds, and whoever has read the new Preface to “Barnaby Rudge” must remember several of his old friends in that line.  He had quite a fund of canary-bird anecdotes, and the pert ways of birds that picked up worms for a living afforded him infinite amusement.  He would give a capital imitation of the way a robin-redbreast cocks his head on one side preliminary to a dash forward in the direction of a wriggling victim.  There is a small grave at Gad’s Hill to which Dickens would occasionally take a friend, and it was quite a privilege to stand with him beside the burial-place of little Dick, the family’s favorite canary.

What a treat it was to go with him to the London Zooelogical Gardens, a place he greatly delighted in at all times!  He knew the zooelogical address of every animal, bird, and fish of any distinction; and he could, without the slightest hesitation, on entering the grounds, proceed straightway to the celebrities of claw or foot or fin.  The delight he took in the hippopotamus family was most exhilarating.  He entered familiarly into conversation with the huge, unwieldy creatures, and they seemed to understand him.  Indeed, he spoke to all the unphilological inhabitants with a directness and tact which went home to them at once.  He chaffed with the monkeys, coaxed the tigers, and bamboozled the snakes, with a dexterity unapproachable.  All the keepers knew him, he was such a loyal visitor, and I noticed they came up to him in a friendly way, with the feeling that they had a sympathetic listener always in Charles Dickens.