When quite a pup, hardly half-grown, he played a trick unaccountable to
me at this day as it was then. Sam had the run of the house, and he
availed himself of it. On going into the breakfast-room, one morning
early, I observed a singular phenomenon in connection with a large,
cold round of beef, which was the _piece de resistance_ on the table.
It was curious to behold a round of cold beef with a tail, which it
wagged, and feathered, and beckoned with, as if to say, "Come, eat me."
The tail was the tail of Sam, whose body was concealed far down in the
interior of the tower of beef, into which he had cut his way with great
perseverance and success. But the puzzle was, how he got there; for
there was no chair within reach of the table, and he was much too small
to have jumped up on it; while the theory of the servant, who
propounded that he must have climbed up by the table-cloth, tooth over
claw, was wild, and simply entitled to the contempt of any person aware
of the difference between dog and cat. There is but one acceptable
theory on the subject,--that he was down in the caverns of the beef,
_tail and all_, before it was brought up-stairs, and so escaped notice.
Early in life, he contracted--from evil association, perhaps--a vulgar
trick of running after carriages and barking at the horses' heels, a
trick of which I in vain tried to break him.
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