FRIENDS OF MY YOUTH. F we reflect upon the nature of our inter tonishing what an important part they play in our lives, and how much they influence the tenour of our every-day existence. Everyone is, in some way or another, interested in some animal; whether it be through affection, or humanity, from the love of knowledge, or from the love of gain. Indeed, looked at in a purely economical spirit as regards affection, the expenditure, or waste, of that commodity in the direction of pets is a fact worthy of attention. From the time when I was old enough to maul a kitten, up to the present moment, I have never been without a pet of some sort. In my schooldays I kept many varieties of the species pet; indeed, my room at school went by the name of H-'s menagerie. At one time I had in this room, which was about twelve feet square, a squirrel, two rats, a bullfinch, which drew its own water, a small German owl, and generally a few mice loose about the room. Sometimes the squirrel or the rats would get away, and turn up in unexpected places in other boys' bedrooms, causing great consternation. I certainly could sleep under any circumstances in those days, for the owl, about midnight, would utter the most harrowing shrieks; the squirrel would commence the treadmill business in his wire wheel, as if he was condemned to hard-labour; and a little later on in the night, the bullfinch would begin drawing water as if he had a heavy bet to decide upon the number of buckets he could draw per minute, or as if he was assisting at a fire. Sometimes, too, the owl, who was chained to the top of a cupboard, would hang himself, and wake me up by his direful calls for assistance; I would then have to get up and release him, generally getting well clawed for my trouble. I met the other day an old schoolfellow whom I had not seen since I left school, and who is now in the army. After we had shaken hands, before taking a chair at my side, he regarded me with a suspicious look, and at length blurted out, "I say, H—, you haven't got any rats about you, have you?" My recollections as to the rats of other days having faded, I was rather astonished at first; but we afterwards had a good laugh over it, on his reminding me that I used to carry them in my pockets. One of the most amusing, and at the same time most troublesome, pets I ever had was a magpie, which I bought for sixpence of a boy who had taken it from a nest, of which it was the sole occupant. Whether its peculiar disposition was owing to the circumstances of its birth, in which I believe it resembled that of the phoenix, I don't know; but from its earliest days, in fact, from the moment it was put into my hand, upon which it at once imprinted the grip-not of friendship—until the day of its expulsion from our grounds, its life was one long career of fraud, deception, and crime. Certainly, at first, Mag, as we called him, simulated a sort of friendship for me, as I fed him, and protected him from the resentment of his numerous enemies; but when he arrived at maturity and was able to provide for himself, he was, I grieve to say, not above pecking at the hand that had cherished him. He was a terror to my young sisters, upon whom, when walking in the garden, he would descend from some tree, and, with a malignant chuckle, inflict severe wounds on their unprotected little legs. He made the life of every dog about the place a burden to him, by hiding himself, and then imitating my whistle, at the same time stealthily shifting his ground, sometimes even calling them by name. He would take bones away from them if left unguarded for a moment, and his favourite diversion was pecking the hairs out of their tails, and by constant torment depriving them of their rest. Mag had but one friend about the whole place besides myself, but even him he alienated by the most treacherous conduct, after carrying on a long and successful course of deception. This was an impassive old gardener, called John. Him, Mag would follow about most sedulously when planting beans or peas, affecting a good deal of kindly interest in his work; but after John had left the garden, and when he thought no one was looking, he would hop down the line he had seen planted with such care, and pick out the peas, or whatever had been planted, chuckling to himself in an unearthly voice. Of course this was found out, and then Mag was almost friendless, though I am bound to say this did not much affect his spirits. As he grew older, he became more and more evil-minded and audacious, and he soon evinced a thorough contempt and detestation of every living thing, so much so that many people regarded him as an evil spirit. Mag, however, had one very weak point for so clever a bird. It was this. When he had stolen anything, he would always put it in one hiding-place. This we easily discovered by watching him, and upon anything being lost, Mag's effects were at once overhauled, and very queer effects they were generally-bones, papers, thimbles, bits of glass, keys-of which he was very fond-apples, pens, pencils, etc., being the chief ingredients. remote farm house, where, the last I heard of him was, that he had become gloomy, and misanthropical, and, as his enemies alleged, was indulging his cruel propensities at the cost of some discomfort to sundry small ducklings, by taking them up to the tops of very tall trees, and in a meditative state of mind dropping them. His enemies said this of him; but I still believe that he was carrying out experiments in gravitation. He had many very amusing tricks, one of which was a habit he had of perching himself upon my sister's aviary, and there, with puffedout throat, making the air hideous with his ghastly attempts to imitate the canaries. He would sometimes attempt social intercourse with other Mags, who settled in the neighbour-will ing fields, but I invariably noticed that they all fled upon his approach, as if the evil one was among them. It appeared, however, that Mag had some engaging points in his character, though undiscernible to human kind; for he eventually succeeded in attaching to himself a lady Mag. I expect, though, he came out in his true colours as bully and tyrant, before the affair was settled by her parents, as she disappeared; not, however, before he had let us know what was going on, for one day he appeared at the kitchen window with his fiancée, and introduced her to the servants, saying, "Mag! cook!-cook! Mag!" This, though it may seem improbable, is really true. I cannot refrain, in briefly biographising Mag, from giving an episode in his life which caused much amusement at the time. My father (who would not hurt a fly), one day driven to desperation, and exasperated in the extreme by Mag's malignant attacks upon him-Mag endeavouring to peck his hands and facestruck him down with his stick, upon which Mag fell over on his back, turned up the whites of his eyes, and giving a ghastly croak, apparently quitted the scenes of his evil doings. My father, overcome with remorse at the deed he had done, came to me, and, in a most penitent manner, admitted that he had given way to his temper, and dealt Mag a foul blow. This news, I am sorry to say, was received with irrepressible delight by the family circle; but their merriment was speedily nipped in the bud, for, on my going out to inter the body, like mother Hubbard, I found no Mag; but was greeted with a diabolical chuckle from a neighbouring shrub. As Mag got on in years, however, his disposition became so soured, and his conduct and temper so unbearable, that I was obliged to give in to the complaints of every one about the place; and he was banished to a very There is a great deal of character in dogs, as every one knows who has had much to do with them. Some dogs are of a forgiving, others of an unforgiving disposition; some not bear being laughed at, others will adapt themselves to whatever state of mind their masters happen to be in, whether depressed or in good spirits. I have known dogs very easily bored, dogs of a sneaking disposition, dogs whose every thought was centred in sport, and dogs who would show great discrimination in their choice of companions. One very peculiar feature is common to all dogs, and that is their preference for the society of man to that of their own kind. I once had a terrier who divided his allegiance between myself and our coachman. This coachman (as we found out after he had left) was in the habit of repairing in the evening, when not wanted, to a friendly Public in the village, which was about a mile distant, and this dog would always go with him. Should, however, coachee happen to go without him, the dog would first look round the stable, etc., have a peep into the room where coachee's missus was sitting, anxiously awaiting the return of her lord and master, and then, apparently, having made up his mind, trot off down to the village, where he would visit all the "houses of call" coachee affected, till he discovered him, when he would walk up to him, lick his hand, and curl himself up under his bench. I remember being told an amusing story by a Birkenhead man, who went over to Liverpool every day to business, and who owned a very clever little Scotch terrier. This dog, he told me, would constantly cross over to Liverpoolas he supposed by one of the boats-look in at his master in his office, and after paying his respects, trot back again. The sort of instinct dogs have as to their way home, if lost, is also very remarkable. I remember a dog-fancier, of whom I bought a bull-terrier, (a very highly-gifted dog, and the only dog I ever knew that could purr,) telling me how he had bought it of a navvy at a public-house in Fleet Street, and getting into a cab with it, drove off. He had got as far as Whitehall, when it escaped. The dog then bolted up towards Charing Cross, and my friend followed it in his cab, telling the driver to "keep his hye on 'im." Cabby, however, lost sight of the dog entirely, somewhere in the Strand, and my friend then paid off his cab and began prowling about the neighbourhood, considerably riled by the loss of his money, and nettled at being outwitted by a dog. Suddenly the happy thought entered his mind, that, if he went back to the public in Fleet Street, he might find either navvy or dog. Sure enough, he found them both, the dog receiving him with a growl from beneath his master's bench. My friend then had a little difficulty in persuading the navvy to look upon him as the dog's rightful proprietor, his idea of meum and tuum being rather limited, and of a onesided nature; but eventually, either overcome by beer, or influenced by the fact that there had been witnesses to the deal, he succumbed, and allowed the dog to be carried off by his rightful owner. Another dog of my acquaintance assists in carrying on the business at a café. He begs of the customers for coppers, and then walks majestically up to the counter, and drops the money out of his mouth; being rewarded with sugar, for which he has a great liking. It being nearly midnight when I first saw this transaction, I asked the waiter, who was a Frenchman, if the dog ever went to bed, and received the answer that he "made the day dark;" from which I concluded that the dog, like the waiters, turned the day into night : in fact, adapted himself to circumstances-no doubt finding it very dull in the daytime. This dog is a noble St. Bernard, and the first time I saw him he really gave me the notion that he was oppressed by the consciousness of his social degradation, and that his devotion to business resulted from an effort to drown his recollections of past and more prosperous days. One of the most affectionate pets I ever had was a squirrel called Scug, which I brought up from its infancy, and which, like Artemus Ward's kangaroo, was a most "amoozin' little cuss." This squirrel was the source of frequent "impo's" to me, at school, as I often carried him in the breast-pocket of my jacket when in a drawing, or some equally unimportant class, where I was not in much dread of the master. On these occasions, unless well provided with amusement, in the shape of nuts, he would escape generally at an unhappy moment, when a master's eye happened to be upon me --and create a diversion, by the whole class being set to catch him. He became greatly attached to me, and would, when I called him, jump from one end of the room on to my shoulder in a bound. He was very fond of hiding himself under my pillow and sleeping there. Though anything but timid with me, he would never allow any one else to take liberties with him, and would show great timidity at a stranger coming into the room. When I went home for the holidays, I used to take him out in the garden and let him run wild. The first time I did this, I had my doubts as to seeing him again; but, on my calling him, he rushed wildly down from a tree he was in and sprang hastily into my pocket, as if he knew he had been out on parole, and feared to trust any longer to his good intentions. After this, I let him have his liberty frequently; and, strange to say, he never abused it, for though he would stay away for two days at a time, and be seen nearly a quarter of a mile from our house, he invariably returned, and would welcome me really as if he was glad to get back. This I never could understand, though the same thing happened to me with a brace of wood-pigeons, which, for some time after I had let them fly, would hover about the garden, and come to be fed at my call. In Scug's case, I should not wonder if he found his living hard to get, not being accustomed to it; and that this influenced his returning as much as affection for myself. Poor Scug, however, went the way of all pets; for, one day, on my calling him, he failed to appear, and I found him quite cold and stiff, having, apparently, died in a fit. TABLE TALK. PARAGRAPH recently appeared in these columns on Liebig's Extract of Meat, which has caused several of our readers unnecessary alarm. So far from regarding the various forms of Extract of Meat, which are now introduced into the English market in the light of poisons (as it has been implied that I have done), I consider that they are invaluable in the sick room, and useful in the kitchen; but finding that a German physician, Dr. Kemmerich, had ascertained, by experiments on animals, that the extract, when given in large doses, might prove a deadly poison, I felt that, at a time when our cooks are daily using it for soups, &c., in thousands of British kitchens, it was only right to diffuse the knowledge of Dr. Kemmerich's results. If these results are trustworthy, the sooner our cooks are informed of them the better, in order that they may use the extract with caution; if they are not correct, counter-experiments will soon set the question at rest. As, however, I should feel deep regret if these remarks should induce a single invalid to lose his faith in this most valuable substance, or should in any way tend to diminish the sale of the extract as a judicious aid in cookery, it is right to state that, at all events, for the present, no one need feel alarm at Dr. Kemmerich's results. It appears that the manager of one of the principal companies for preparing the Extract of Meat has written to consult Professor Liebig regarding Dr. Kemmerich's views. In reply, the Professor, apparently not acquainted with the article of Dr. Kemmerich's in Pflüger's Archiv, quotes from the author's Graduation Thesis, presented to the Medical Faculty of Bonn, on this subject the following satisfactory remark:"I do not think it possible," says Dr. Kemmerich, in p. 3 of his Thesis, "that beef-tea, in the form in which it is used for household purposes, could be the cause of poisoning." It would, perhaps, have been more satisfactory to physiologists if the Munich Professor had repeated the experiments; but, by the quotation from the Thesis, it is obvious that Dr. Kemmerich is only emerging from the state of studentship, and clever young physicians often do make marvellous discoveries. Let then our readers think no more of Dr. Kemmerich, until, at all events, they hear of any further experiments he may make, and in the mean time listen to the opinion of one of the most brilliant members of the medical profession in England, Dr. Parkes, Professor of Hygiene at the Army Medical School. "No article of food," he observes, "is known to me which contains as much of those salts essential to nutrition. . . . In all our trials at Netley even small quantities produced a feeling of support and vigour, which ensued very soon after it was taken. Those who took it expressed their sensations by saying that it stimulated them; and one friend, who tried it several times after coming in tired and wet from yachting, compared its effects to that of hot whiskey and water, and assured me that its invigorating effects were superior to those of the spirit. In conclusion, I believe the Extract of Meat to be a very valuable food for giving nitrogen, salts, and lactic acid to the system, and it will, I believe, be extremely valuable in disease. For the military surgeon it is likely to be very useful in active service, not only for the wounded and sick, but for healthy men Its small bulk, ease of cooking, savoury taste, and great restorative action, would make it most useful in rapid expeditions." I believe that it was largely used and gave great satisfaction in the late Abyssinian campaign. A CURIOUS discovery has lately been made in connection with gun-cotton which can hardly fail to be attended with important and valuable results. It has hitherto been deemed impossible to effect an explosion with gun cotton, unless the substance were strongly confined. It had a lazy way of burning, merely with a sort of swift puff, and of sneaking out of any channel of escape which might be open to it. So thoroughly established was this characteristic of gun-cotton, that a common lecture experiment has been to ignite a puff of it lying in the naked palm of the hand, or to fire a small quantity resting on one plate of a nicely balanced scale. The hand was not burned, the balance of the scale was not disturbed, and this because of that peculiar property of gun-cotton which impelled it to get rid of its force in the easiest and most harmless manner. Confine the same quantity of gun-cotton in a stout case, give it work to do, and it straightway produces effects equivalent to those of six times its weight of gunpowder. But it has now been discovered, in the course of some experiments at the War Office Chemical Establishment, Woolwich, that by igniting gun-cotton in the same way as Mr. Nobel ignites his nitro-glycerine, viz., by concussion, produced by the explosion in contact with it of a small charge of detonating powder, the full effects of gun-cotton are developed whether it be confined or not. Nay, more than the full effects-if it is not an Irishism to say so-for it appears that gun-cotton fired by concussion exerts a force equal to that of nitro-glycerine, or nearly ten times that of gunpowder. Thus, whereas gun-cotton fired by simple ignition, puffs off harmlessly when unconfined, exerting no destructive force whatever upon the body upon which it may be resting, the same quantity of gun-cotton exploded by concussion will shatter blocks of granite, break up thick iron plates, and blow down or destroy anybody in contact with it. This, we say, is a most important discovery in many ways. In the first place, it seems to strike a death-blow at the use of nitro-glycerine, whether in its pure form, or disguised as "dynamite," or however applied, and nitroglycerine will be a monstrous good-riddance. In the next place, mining of all descriptions, military and civil, becomes immensely facilitated, while the dangerous operation of "tamping" is no longer required. For torpedo and submarine purposes the discovery will be especially useful. Gun-cotton had already been adopted as the agent par excellence to be employed in torpedoes; but it will now no longer be necessary to enclose the charges in stout, expensive iron cases, as heretofore, in order to develop the full effect, or, indeed, any effect at all; any case which is waterproof will answer all the purpose. For breaking walls and stockades, gun-cotton fired by concussion has been shown by some recent experiments at Chatham to be a mighty agent of destruction, and nothing can be more striking than to see a huge stockade cut clean in two as by a knife by the simple explosion of a long sausageshaped charge of gun-cotton. is not long since a doctor waited on an alderman at the Guildhall, to complain of the evil resulting from the wear of magenta socks; but more recently, Professor Wanklyn has declared that not only this colour, but also the blues and violets derived from aniline, are dangerously contaminated with arsenic; so that the wearers of mauve shirts and hose, run the risk of infection by poison taken, like Joey Ladle's wine, in at the pores. Let them beware! But if mauve be eschewed, let not yellow be substituted, unless the nature of the dye is ascertained; for there is in use a colouring matter, ycleped artificial saffron, which is a compound of picric acid, and is nearly as explosive as gunpowder. Mr. Crookes asserts that stockings dyed with picrate of potash, are liable to explode on the feet of those wearers who sit too near the fire! The hosiers of Christ's Hospital should look to this. A FRENCH doctor appears to have taken such pity on the poor animals upon which jeopardous surgical and therapeutic experiments are tried, that he has determined to make his own body the subject of his tentatives. The bold man's name is Lespian. He told the French Academy lately, that he had inoculated himself with the grey matter from the lung of a consumptive patient just dead, with a view of proving whether tuberculosis can be contracted by inoculation. the experiment succeeds, here will be a martyr to science. Suicides should take the hint and puzzle the crowner's jury for a verdict. Suppose The Authors of the articles in ONCE A WEEK reserve to themselves the right of translation. It is impossible for the Editor to return rejected manuscripts. ONCE A WEEK is published early on Wednesday morning, in time for the Morning Mails, and copies may be obtained through all News Agents, and at all Railway bookstalls on the day of publication. ONCE A WEEK is registered for transmission abroad. All communications relating to Advertisements should be addressed to the Publishers, Messrs. Bradbury, Evans, & Co., 11, Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, E.C. |