Once, when he was about a
year old, I took him up beside me into a high _caleche_, in which we
were going some distance. The moment the horse started, Sam jumped out
to have a bark at his heels, when, to my horror, the wheel of the
vehicle, in which there were three of us, went right over the middle of
his body, cutting him, apparently, in two; but he was up in a second,
and barking at heels and wheels for half a mile before we could pull up
and get him in again. This accident appeared to decide him in the
choice of a profession, for he devoted himself energetically, from that
hour, to the pursuit and baying-at of all manner of wheeled things
propelled by horse-power.
A rat he would never touch, although I introduced him to one before he
was a year old; he manifested neither fear of the vermin, nor surprise
at it, but simply took no interest in it. He had much pleasure in
worrying cats; but that was owing, I fancy, to a sad discomfiture he
once met with from one. Walking through a suburb one day, with Sammy
trotting before me in dreamy mood, to which he was much given, a small,
but remarkably severe cat made a sudden and very fierce dash at him
from a cottage-door, taking him so completely aback, that he tumbled,
head over tail, into a deep, dirty pool of green, stagnant water, such
as is usually to be seen in the pleasure-grounds environing a
suburbo-Hibernian shanty.
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