It would be difficult to find in history a truly great person, like Wellington, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Samuel Johnson, or Sir Walter Scott, who has not been a lover of dogs or birds or cats. Frederick the Great when dying asked an attendant to cover one of his dogs which seemed to be shivering with the cold. "Our Dumb Animals" for May, 1896, gives the names of more than a hundred persons who have left legacies in the last few years to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Every State and city needs more of these generous givers. A letter lies before me from Mr. E. C. Parmelee, the general agent of the society in Cleveland, Ohio, which says, "I regret to say that we have no dog shelter.... We should very much like to have one, and a hospital for broken-down and neglected horses.... We have very much hoped that we should have a bequest at no very distant day sufficiently large to build such a block as we need, with dormitories for children who are picked up in the night, and with an apartment for keeping our horse-ambulance, with a pair of horses and driver always at command, to remove such horses as are disabled, and fall in the streets from various causes." Every society needs more agents to watch carefully the dumb creatures who carry heavy loads, or are neglected or ill treated; and the gospel of kindness to animals needs to be carried to every part of the earth. WILLIAM W. CORCORAN AND HIS ART GALLERY. William Wilson Corcoran was born Dec. 27, 1798, at Georgetown, D.C. He was the son of Thomas Corcoran, who settled in Georgetown when a youth, and became one of its leading citizens. He was mayor, postmaster, and one of the founders of the Columbian College, of which institution he was an active trustee while he lived. He was also one of the principal founders of two Episcopal churches in Georgetown, St. John's and Christ's Church, and was always a vestryman in one or the other. His son William, after a good preparatory education, spent a year at the Georgetown College, and a year at the school of the Rev. Addison Belt, a graduate of Princeton. His father desired that he should complete his college course; but William was eager to enter upon a business life, and when he was seventeen went into the dry-goods store of his brothers, James and Thomas Corcoran. Two years later they established him in business under the firm name of W. W. Corcoran & Co. The firm prospered so well that the wholesale auction and commission business was begun in 1819. For four years the firm made money; but in the spring of 1823, they, with many other merchants in Georgetown and Baltimore, failed, and were obliged to settle with their creditors for fifty cents on the dollar.