There are some people who think I don’t like to give performances. I’m sure I don’t know why, except that I do get tired a little once in a while, and sometimes my master wants me to be quiet and good when I feel frisky and frolicsome and want to kick up my heels. I always feel better the busier I am, and I remember one day in San Francisco, when we gave nineteen performances, I was so full of fun and spirits when we got through that Jasper had to be pretty stern with me before I would quieten down. Another thing that amuses me. People often ask if I ever eat anything besides oats and hay, and things of that kind. It amuses me because I like everything, just as most healthy boys and girls do. I eat bread and butter—and I like it with jam on or sugar or honey—and hard boiled eggs, and nuts, and every kind of fruit, raw, cooked or preserved. Candies I just dote on, and vegetables come as a welcome change. I can eat them raw or cooked, hot or cold, and I don’t object to lettuce put in sandwiches. Sandwiches? Of course I eat them: ham, beef, chicken or tongue, with mustard or without. And nothing I like better, at times, than a ham bone to gnaw on. Sometimes Prince—Jasper’s pet dog—brings one in and shares it with me, and I enjoy it amazingly. But one of my special delicacies is cake. My dear mistress, Mrs. Sigsbee, long ago found that out, and whenever she wants to make me feel extra good she makes a cake for me. My! My! She is a fine cake-maker. One day she had made a large cake for a party. I think it was Master’s birthday, and they had invited a lot of friends. That day Master loosed me from the stable and sent me up to the house to see Mistress. Sometimes he does this, and trusts me to go directly there. I did so this time, and when I got into the yard I went right to the kitchen window, which was open, and through which a delicious odor came. Right there on the table was the cake. It was this that smelled so good. I put my nose close to it and it made my mouth water. There was no one there to tell me not to do it, so I just bit right into the middle of it, took a large mouthful, and it—what do the boys say—“went to the right spot.” The trouble was that first mouthful whetted my appetite for more, and I had made a pretty big hole in that cake before Mistress came in and found what I had done. She drove me away, but began to laugh so heartily that when Master came running, in answer to her call, she could scarcely speak. She could just point to the cake and to me. There I was, with cake crumbs and jam or jelly all over my nose and in my whiskers, and Mistress at last managed to gasp out, between laughs, “Captain’s celebrating your birthday. He likes cake, too!”