George was in such a rage that he picked up a hair-brush off the chest
of drawers and shied it at Billy, who dodged, and the brush went to
smash on the brick hearth. At this the unregenerate Billy burst into a
subdued guffaw, and looking into George's angry eyes, chuckled,
"Hi, Marse George, you done bus' yo' ma's h'yar-bresh!" Which showed how
much impression "Marse George's" wrath made on Billy.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
A QUEER HOSPITAL.
"I went to the animals' fair,
The birds and beasts were there"--
at any rate it was the animals' hospital, and there were enough birds
and beasts for a fair. The hospital is in charge of the New York College
of Veterinary Surgeons, and that, if you please, is part of the
University of New York; so if you wanted to send your dickey-bird there
for the pip, he would be in a manner under the sheltering wing of all
the D.D.s and LL.D.s that shine as the regents of that noble
institution.
New York people are apt to call this the dog hospital, but that must be
because they take more interest in the dogs than in its other inmates,
for here you can get medical treatment for any living thing except a
human being. Horses, cows, dogs, and cats form the steady bulk of its
beneficiaries, but elephants and white mice are among them too.
And not only animals are brought here, but the doctors go out and make
them professional visits. One of the doctors is now attending the
curious dreadful-looking Gila monster at the Zoo in Central Park; he
comes--the monster, not the doctor--from Arizona, near the Gila River,
and he is two feet long, with a body like an alligator and a head like a
snake; he is in a low state of health, and neither food nor drink has
passed his lips for seven months. How is that for a poor appetite?
The doctor does not have much hope of him; the matter seems to be that
he was kept too warm and fed too much (on raw eggs) last winter, when he
ought to have been hibernating, or something like it.
A great deal of the hospital's most interesting practice is among the
animals kept in zoological gardens or in travelling shows. An old circus
lion was brought here not long ago to have his ulcerated tooth pulled.
Now if the toothache makes you feel as "cross as a bear," how cross does
the toothache make a live lion feel?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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