hunting bees and pulling them to pieces; or catching flies on the window, plucking off their wings and legs, sticking pins through them, and laughing at the poor insects as they twist and tumble about in pain. What animal can be more inoffensive or useful in a house than a cat? yet, whenever it stirs out of the house, some idle rascals chase it, stone it, or set on a dog to worry it, while they stand looking on and enjoying the animal's sufferings. The chief pleasure of some boys, who live in the country, seems to consist in killing birds and robbing their nests; chasing the cows and sheep till they are ready to fall down; lashing the horses, and especially any poor donkey that may fall in their way; setting all the dogs to fight with each other, or to worry the cats, or to frighten children; and in making themselves a terror to the neighbourhood. Now, children who shew such cruelty when they are young, can hardly be expected to turn very kind and gentle-hearted when they grow up; nor will they be kind to their brothers and sisters if they delight in inflicting pain upon beasts. A boy who is really kind-hearted will treat every animal with kindness; and nothing is a more certain mark of a brutal disposition than feeling pleasure in tormenting poor dumb creatures. It is perfect nonsense to say that beasts feel no pain; we see that they shew all the symptoms of pain which human beings do; and a horse suffers just as much from a whipping as a boy would do. How little those children who rejoice in cruelty think of the pleasure they might receive by treating every beast in a kind and gentle manner! Dogs, cats, rabbits, squirrels, pigeons, and every sort of bird, soon learn to distinguish the hand that feeds them and uses them gently; and their innocent sports, and playful gratitude, afford a never-ending source of pleasure, far deeper, as well as purer, than any which can be derived from torturing them. It would be well if all who profess to be our friends were to be as faithfully attached to us as our dogs are; and if those on whom we bestow favours were to manifest the same gratitude which we can see in the faces of our dumb favourites. 221 KINDNESS TO ANIMALS. I WOULD not enter on my list of friends Who needlessly set foot upon a worm. Sacred to neatness and repose, may die: Not so when, held within their proper bounds, Else they are all-the meanest things that are, As God was free to form them at the first, By budding ills, that ask a prudent hand Than cruelty, most devilish of them all. By which heaven moves in pardoning guilty man; Shall seek it, and not find it, in his turn. COWPER. THE VILLAGE BULLY. WILLIAM, or, as he was usually called, Billy Jones, was the bully of the village. He was a lazy, hulking boy of twelve; and you could |