The needs and laws of their being have developed their morals in differing degree, and the virtues of individuals vary as greatly as among ourselves. Of the characters and ideals of wild creatures we can snatch but brief and tantalizing glimpses; from the larger domestic animals our daily life is too removed to make intimacy possible, but dogs and cats, the free birds, and our caged pets--if considered with a seeing eye--open a door through which we can learn much, though our indolence and stupidity still shut us off from the free community of speech. Carlyle says: "No nobler feeling than that of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. It is at this hour, and at all hours the unifying influence in man's life. Religion, I find, stands upon it ... what, therefore, is loyalty proper, the life breath of all society, but an effluence of hero worship; submissive admiration for the truly great! Society is founded upon hero worship." Lockhart in his Life of Scot tells of a little pig who conceived a passion of admiration and affection for Scott which much embarrassed the great story teller. This susceptible little porker would lurk about, waiting for Scott's appearance, squealing with joy when he came, and trotting patiently all day at his heels through miles of wandering, proud and contented at merely being allowed to attend on Scott. What was this but Carlyle's hero worship. It is not by the way recorded that any pig ever made a hero of Carlyle. I once had the pleasure of knowing a goose who abandoned his kind for just such a human friendship, and the same love of the admirable is mutual among the animals themselves. A small green paroquet, who lived in the freedom of a bird fancier's room with a canary, was possessed of a passionate admiration for his more gifted companion. His every waking moment was spent in the most touching efforts to imitate the thrilling songs and graceful airiness of his more gifted friend, in no way discouraged by the contumely with which the yellow tenor treated his lumberingly pathetic failures. But there is no more confirmed hero worshipper than your dog. Stevenson says of a dog whom he knew and loved: "It was no sinecure to be Coolin's idol. He was exacting like a rigid parent; and at every sign of levity in the man whom he respected he announced loudly the death of virtue and the proximate fall of the pillars of the earth." And, he adds, "for every station the dog has an ideal to which the master--under pain of derogation--will do wisely to conform. How often has not a cold glance informed me that my dog was disappointed, and how much more gladly would he not have taken a beating than to be thus wounded in the seat of piety."