When possible, all boys and girls should have
pets, and they should be made to tend their charges without any adult
help whatever. No indirect discipline has such a humanizing effect. The
unregenerate boy deprived of pets will tie kettles to dogs' tails, he
will shoot at cats with catapults, he is merciless to small birds, and
no one can convince him that frogs or young nestlings can feel. When he
has pets, his mental horizon is widened and his kindlier instincts
awaken. A boy or girl without a pet is maimed in sympathy.
Let me plead for discrimination in choice of pets. A gentleman--like the
celebrated Mary--had a little lamb which he loved; but the little lamb
developed into a very big and vicious ram which the owner could not
find heart to kill. When this gentleman's friends were holding sweet and
improving converse with him, that sheep would draw up behind his
master's companion; then he would shoot out like a stone from a sling,
and you would see a disconcerted guest propelled through space in a
manner destructive alike to dignity and trousers. That sheep comes and
butts at the front-door if he thinks his master is making too long a
call; it is of no use to go and apologize for he will not take any
denial, and, moreover, he will as soon ram you with his granite skull as
look at you.
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