And Lion, the good Newfoundland dog, who let us ride on his back--when he was in the mood, and tumbled us off when he was not! He was a dear dog; but Fannie, his mate, was anything but amiable, and sometimes gave sore offence to visitors by snapping at their heels and growling. But if the cats and dogs suffered from us, we suffered from José! O José! what a tyrannous little beast you were! Never was a brown donkey prettier, I am quite sure; never did a brown donkey have his own way so completely. Whether a child could take a ride or not depended entirely on whether José was in the mood for it. If not, he trotted a little way till he got the child alone; and then he calmly rubbed off his rider against a tree or fence, and trotted away to the stable. Of course this was when we were very little; but by the time the little ones were big enough to manage him José was dead; so some of us never “got even with him,” as the boys say. When the dearest uncle in the world sent us the donkey-carriage, things went better; for the obstinate little brown gentleman could not get rid of that, of course, and there were many delightful drives, with much jingling of harness and all manner of style and splendor. These were some of our friends, two-footers and four-footers. There were many others, of course, but time and space fail to tell of them. After all, perhaps they were just like other children’s friends. I must not weary my readers by rambling on indefinitely in these long-untrodden paths; but I wish other children could have heard Oggy purr! CHAPTER X. OUR GUESTS. Many interesting visitors came and went, both at Green Peace and the Valley,--many more than I can recollect. The visit of Kossuth, the great Hungarian patriot, made no impression upon me, as I was only a year old when he came to this country; but there was a great reception for him at Green Peace, and many people assembled to do honor to the brave man who had tried so hard to free his country from the Austrian yoke, and had so nearly succeeded. I remember a certain hat, which we younger children firmly believed to have been his, though I have since been informed that we were mistaken. At all events, we used to play with the hat (I wonder whose it was!) under this impression, and it formed an important element in “dressing up,” which was one of our chief delights. One child would put on Kossuth’s hat, another Lord Byron’s helmet,--a superb affair of steel and gold, which had been given to our father in Greece, after Byron’s death (we ought not to have been allowed to touch so precious a relic, far less to dress up in it!); while a third would appropriate a charming little square Polish cap of fine scarlet, which ought to have belonged to Thaddeus of Warsaw, but did not, I fear.