large black Newfoundland, had contracted a warm and devoted friendship for a gray cat that was an inmate of the same family. When the cat was assailed by one of her kind, or by a strange dog, the Newfoundland would pick her up in his mouth and carry her to the house out of reach of danger, the cat maintaining all the while the most perfect serenity of composure, knowing that she was in the care of one who meant her no ill. When the same cat would become sick, the Newfoundland would lie down by her side, caress her with his tongue, and show in every way possible that he was sorry that she was sick. Many examples are recorded of birds feeling sympathy with the lost or deserted young of other species, and that have taken upon themselves the task of feeding the starving children. A pair of robins had constructed a nest near to the writer’s home in the country, where in due season a family of four children was raised. Disaster soon came to the little ones, for both parents were slain by some wicked boys of the neighborhood. There dwelt in the same locality a pair of bluebirds, but between the two families there had never been apparent the least interchange of friendship. Each family kept to itself, and attended to its own business. But when the cry of the young robins in their piteous demands for food rent the air, the bluebirds came over to their home to discover what the trouble was. They were not slow to perceive the sad state of things. Their sympathies were at once aroused, and their energies soon bent in the direction of relieving the sufferings of the little orphaned robins. For the next two weeks they had all they could do in providing meat for their own and the robins’ young. [Illustration: FOUR ORPHANED ROBINS. Kind-Hearted Bluebirds Assuming the Role of Parents.] While capable of showing sympathy for near as well as distant kin, the lower animals have also the capacity to sympathize with human beings in distress. Cats occasionally manifest a sympathy for suffering humanity. As for sympathy displayed by dogs, there is no need to cite examples. No human being, I am safe in saying, was ever free from troubles of some kind, and I am equally sure that no one who had a companionable dog felt that he was without sympathy. Full well does the dog know when his master is suffering pain or sorrow, and his nose pushed into his master’s hand, or laid affectionately upon his knee, is a sign of sympathy worth possessing, even though it exists only in the heart of a dog. From that moment there has been established a bond between the soul of the master and the dog, and certainly no one can believe that the bond can ever be severed by the death of the material body, whether of the man or the animal.