This reference to Major Ryson's bull terrier reminds me of the visit which the Baylors' dog paid to our new premises. The Baylors' dog is a St. Bernard about a year old and weighing one hundred and seventy-five pounds. Most of the time this amiable leviathan is confined in the Baylors' back yard, a spot hardly large enough to admit of the leviathan's turning around in it. The evening to which I refer the Baylors made a pilgrimage to our new house for the purpose of ascertaining whether we had put in a copper kitchen sink or a galvanized iron one. I can't imagine what possessed them to do it, but they took the St. Bernard with them. The sense of freedom which this playful beast felt upon being let loose in our extensive yard proved wholly uncontrollable, and while the Baylors were investigating the sink question the amiable leviathan gallivanted about the premises with that elephantine exuberance which is to be expected of a St. Bernard one year old and weighing one hundred and seventy-five pounds. Adah (who has an eye to the beautiful) had planted a vast number of nasturtiums and red geraniums, and under one of the oak trees had trained numerous graceful, dainty vines, which, as I recall, are known to horticultural amateurs as 'cobies. In the twinkling of an eye the Baylor leviathan swept these blossoming innocents out of existence, and in other twinklings he wrought desolation among the peonies, the pansies, and other floral objects upon which the women folk had lavished a wealth of patient care. A bull in a china-shop could hardly create the havoc which the Baylor pup, with his one hundred and seventy-five pounds of animal spirits, wrought in our lawn. Next morning the lawn looked as if it had been honored with a nocturnal visitation from Burr Robbins' galaxy of domesticated wild beasts. Curiously enough, the Baylors thought it was very funny. I don't know why it is, but it can't be denied that it _is_ a fact that those acts which in other people's pups strike us as strangely improper, become in our own pups the most natural and most mirth-provoking performances in the world. I recall the anger with which neighbor Baylor drove neighbor Macleod's mastiff off his porch one evening because that mastiff attempted to make his way through the screen door behind which the family cat was visible. In this instance the Macleod mastiff was simply following the predominating instinct of the canine kind, and neighbor Baylor hated the unreasonable beast for it. Yet I 'll warrant me that while his own lubberly pup was prancing around over our flowerbeds neighbor Baylor regarded the performance as the most cunning and most charming divertisement in the world.