Part 13

The famous coat, which has found a resting-place in a glass case in Sir William Throckmorton's hall, was exhibited at the great International Exhibition of 1851, where it attracted a great deal of attention, a few copies of the old engravings from which our first two illustrations are reproduced being eagerly bought up. Our last photograph shows the bill which was printed for that exhibition.

Over thirty years afterwards the coat was again brought before public notice, this time at the Newbury Art and Industrial Exhibition of 1884. It was photographed for the first time, by Sir William's permission, for this article. Though to us it may seem rather a curious cut for a hunting-coat, it was the approved style for those times, the long coat-tails flying to the wind during a chase. Needless to say, however, this coat has never been used for that purpose.

These are certainly days of speed, and though probably with the vastly superior machinery of to-day this wonderful performance could be eclipsed, it is interesting to notice that up to the present it has never been equalled.

_Animal Actualities._

NOTE.--_These articles consist of a series of perfectly authentic anecdotes of animal life, illustrated by Mr. J. A. Shepherd, an artist long a favourite with readers of_ THE STRAND MAGAZINE. _We shall be glad to receive similar anecdotes, fully authenticated by names of witnesses, for use in future numbers. While the stories themselves will be matters of fact, it must be understood that the artist will treat the subject with freedom and fancy, more with a view to an amusing commentary than to a mere representation of the occurrence._

IX.

This is a tale of true love that no social distinctions could hinder; of a love that persisted in spite of misfortune, disfigurement, and poverty; of a love that ruled not merely the camp, the court, and the grove, but the back garden also: of a love that (as Mr. Seaman sings) "was strong love, strong as a big barn-door"; of a love that, no doubt, would have laughed at locksmiths had the cachinnation been necessary; that, in short, was the only genuine article, with the proper trade-mark on the label.

"Pussy" was the name of a magnificent Persian cat--a princess among cats, greatly sought by the feline nobility of the neighbourhood. She was the sort of cat that no merely individual name would be good enough for; her magnificence soared above all such smallnesses, and, as she was _the_ ideal cat, combining all the glories and all the beauties of cat-hood in herself, she was called, simply and comprehensively, "Pussy." She condescended to reside at the house, and at the expense, of Mr. Thomas C. Johnson, of The Firs, Alford, Lincolnshire, and all the most aristocratic Toms of the vicinity were suitors for the paw of this princess. Blue Persians, buff Persians, Manx cats, Angora cats--all were her devoted slaves, and it was generally expected that she would make a brilliant match. She had a house (or palace) of her own at the back of Mr. Johnson's. Here were her bed, her larder--an elegant shelf supporting her wire meat safe, and her special knife and fork for her meat must be cut up for her--and her plate and saucer. And here, by the door, many suitors waited to bow their respects as she came forth to take the air. But Pussy, who trod the earth as though the planet were far too common for her use, turned up her nose at the noble throng, and dismissed them with effective and sudden language, conjectured to be a very vigorous dialect of Persian.

Then came, meekly crawling and limping to her door, one Lamech, a cat of low degree and no particular breed. His only claim to distinction of any sort was that he had lost a leg--perhaps in a weasel-trap. He was ill-fed, bony, and altogether disreputable; his ears were sore, and his coat unkempt. He came not as a suitor, but as a beggar, craving any odd scraps that the princess might have no use for. So low was he esteemed, indeed, that nobody called him Lamech, his proper name, and he was familiarly and contemptuously known as "Three-legged Tommy." When the princess's human friends saw Three-legged Tommy hanging about, they regarded him as a nuisance and a probable offence in the sight of the princess. Wherefore they chased him mercilessly, tempering their severities, however, by flinging him scraps of food, as far out into the road as possible.

But presently a surprising thing was observed. Pussy actually _encouraged_ Three-legged Tommy! More, she fed him, and her last drop of new milk and her last and tenderest morsel of meat were reserved for his regalement. There was intense commotion among the scorned feline nobility. Three-legged Tommy was actually admitted into that sacred palace, from the portals of which the most distinguished cats in Alford had been driven away!

As for Three-legged Tommy himself, he grew not only more confident, but more knowing. He came regularly at meal times. More, he grew fatter, and less ragged. The princess enjoyed her self-sacrifice for a time, but presently she set herself to get a double ration. Sharing her provisions was all very loving and all very well, but she began to feel that there were advantages in a full meal; and Three-legged Tommy, now grown much more respectable, though a hopeless plebeian still, distinctly gave her to understand that he could do with a bit more.

Three-legged Tommy was the princess's first and only love, but next in her affections ranked Mr. Johnson. It was her habit to follow him about the house and garden, and to confide her troubles to him, sitting on his knee. But now she tried stratagem. Five or six times a day she would assail him with piteous mews, entreating caresses, beseeching eyes, and the most irresistibly captivating manners she could assume. "What can she want?" he would say. "She has not long been fed. _Is_ it meat, old girl?" And, powerless to resist her, he would rise and follow.

Meat it was, of course. And when it was cut she would attack it with every appearance of ravenous hunger--till the master's back was turned. Then--"Come, my love, the feast is spread for thee!"

Out would limp Lamech from behind some near shrub, and Pussy would sit with supreme satisfaction and watch her spouse's enjoyment of the meal she had cajoled for him. And so Three-legged Tommy waxed fat and prospered, and the Beautiful Princess was faithful to him always. Miss Mary Johnson, who was so kind as to send us the story, calls Pussy "a devoted helpmeet." We trust she meant no pun.

X.

A tortoise has many virtues, as for instance, quietness, dignity, and lack of ambition. But, as a rule, activity and courage are not credited to the tortoise. This is a little anecdote of a tortoise who displayed both, in so far as to encounter, single-handed, a terrible puppy more than a fortnight old, and several inches high at the shoulder.

Though the tortoise's lack of ambition may be accepted as a general principle, nevertheless it is relaxed in the ducal matter of strawberry leaves. Every tortoise of the sort we keep about our houses and gardens has an ambition for strawberry leaves--to eat. It may also be said as a warning (having nothing to do with this anecdote) that the tortoise has no ambition, or taste, for slugs or other garden pests. The man who sells them most solemnly avers they have, but that is only his fancy; the tortoise--at any rate, the tortoise he sells--is a vegetarian, as well as a teetotaler and a non-smoker. But as to the strawberry leaves, these are longed for by the tortoise even more than lettuce leaves. Enthusiasm is not a distinguishing characteristic of the tortoise, but when he _is_ enthusiastic it is over strawberry leaves. The tortoise of our anecdote (he had no domestic name, such was his humility) had the even tenor of his life disturbed by a sudden inroad of puppies, who made things very busy about him. The puppies did not altogether understand the tortoise, and the tortoise never wanted to understand the puppies. But the puppies were playful and inquisitive. One morning, just as the tortoise had laid hold of a very acceptable "runner" of strawberry leaves, a puppy, looking for fun, seized the other end in his teeth and pulled. Something had to go, and it was the strawberry leaf the tortoise happened to be biting, close by his mouth. Off went the puppy, trailing the "runner" after him, the tortoise toiling laboriously in the rear. Presently the puppy, finding that speed was no accomplishment of the tortoise, stopped at a corner and waited. Up came the tortoise, drums beating and colours flying, metaphorically speaking, and actually looking as threatening as a harmless tortoise can manage to look. "Snap!" went the tortoise. The puppy was nonplussed. What was this thing? Was it really angry? What would it do to him? His experience of tortoises was small, and this one looked very threatening. Perhaps the safest game was to drop the strawberry leaves, at any rate. So dropped they were, and the puppy sat back in the corner, a trifle apprehensive of what might happen next. But the strawberry leaves were all the tortoise wanted, and those he snatched, and straightway squatted down upon them. Then he ate them, little by little and bite by bite, at his leisure, regarding the puppy defiantly the while. And the puppy carried to all his brothers and sisters a terrible tale of the prowess of that crawling monstrosity that ate leaves, and got formidably angry if you snatched them away for fun.

By F. C. Younger.

It was midnight: the Witch was sitting on an upturned basket in the hen-house, staring at the Memory-Saver. No one but a witch could have seen at all inside the hen-house, but this particular Witch had gathered pieces of decayed wood on the way there, lit them at glow-worms, and stuck them on the walls. They burnt with a weird, blue light, and showed the old Witch on the basket scratching her bristly chin; the Black Cock in a kind of faint up one corner, with his eyes turned up till they showed the whites; the empty nest; the halves of a broken egg-shell on the floor; and beside them a tiny round black lump with all sorts of queer little tags hanging on to it, which was staring back at the Witch with two frightened little pink eyes.

"It's quite a new idea," said the Witch to herself. "A Memory-Saver! How thankful many people would be to get hold of one! But they don't know the way, and they won't ask me. They don't know how to hatch an imp to save your memory from a cock's egg. They even say that a cock never lays eggs. Such ignorance! Cocks always lay them at midnight and eat them before morning; and that's why no one has ever seen one. But if you are careful to sprinkle the cock with Witch-water three nights running, he will lay an egg he cannot eat; and if you bless the egg with the Witch's curse, and roast it three nights in the Witch's fire, when the moon is on the wane, it will hatch a Memory-Saver. But poor mortals don't know this, and that's why they're always worrying and 'taxing their memories,' as they call it, instead of hiring a nice little imp to save them the trouble. Come here, my dear!" she added, addressing the Memory-Saver.

The little black lump rolled over and over until he reached her feet, then gave a jump and landed on two of the thickest of his tags, which supported him like two little legs. With two others he began to rub his little black self all over, while he shed little green tears from his little pink eyes.

He was a queer little person, very like an egg in shape, with no features but a pair of little pink eyes near the top, and a wide slit which went about half-way round him and served him for a mouth. The Witch regarded him in silence; she knew that inside him was nothing but a number of little rooms, carefully partitioned off from one another, which could be emptied by pulling the tag attached to each outside.

There was no sound in the hen-house but the frightened clucking of the hens, the gasping of the Black Cock in the corner, and the sobbing of the imp, which sounded like the squeaking of a slate-pencil on a slate. Presently the Witch patted the Memory-Saver on the head.

"Don't cry, my dear," she said; "there's nothing to cry about! And don't look at that silly Black Cock in the corner. He isn't your Mother any longer. I'm your Mother now--at least, all the Mother you'll get, and I shall pinch you if you don't work. I'll just see if you are in good working order now."

She lifted the imp in her hand as she spoke, and pulled one of the little tags hanging behind him. The Memory-Saver gave a gasp, and, opening his mouth to its widest extent, he began to repeat, rapidly: "J'ai--tu as--il a--nous avons--vous avez--ils ont."

"Very good!" said the Witch, "the French string is in order. I'll try the poetry."

She pulled another tag as she spoke.

Th'Assyrian camedownlike a wolfonthefold, And--his cohorts were--gleaminglike purpleandgold; And the--sheenoftheir--spears was like starsonthesea, When the blue--wavesroll--nightly on deepGalilee

panted the Memory-Saver.

"A little jerky," said the Witch, doubling the strings round the imp and putting him in her pocket; "but it will work smoother in time. It's a splendid idea," she went on, as she buttoned her cloak and opened the door. "A Memory-Saver! Pull the string of the subject you want (the name is written on each tag), and the imp will tell you all about it. Read a set of lessons to him, and then pull the strings belonging to them, and he'll reel them all off word for word. How many children I know would like to get him to take to school in their pockets! There's little Miss Myra, who is always in trouble about her lessons; she would give all she's got for him. But I'll only part with him at my own price."

The Witch had left the hen-house, and was trotting as fast as she could down a little woodland path. The poor little Memory-Saver was jogged this way and that among the rubbish in the Witch's pocket--queer stones, herbs, little dead toads, pounded spiders, and bats' wings. He would soon have been black with bruises if he had not been black by nature. But the worst pain he suffered was anxiety as to what would become of him. What was the Witch going to do with him? Why had she taken him away from the Black Cock, who at least was friendly if he did gasp and show the whites of his eyes? The imp cried again, and wondered how long he would have to stay in that choky pocket.

He had not long to wait. That very afternoon the Witch saw Myra crying over her lessons at the window. She was kept in to learn them, and was feeling miserable and cross. No one was about, so the Witch crept up to the window, and told her all about the Memory-Saver, ending by producing him from her pocket. Oh! how glad he was to get out! He sat gasping with delight on the Witch's hand, while she explained his talents to someone. Who was it? The imp looked up and saw a little girl about ten years old, with an inky pinafore, and long, tumbled brown curls. She looked so much nicer than the Witch, that the Memory-Saver gazed up in her face with a forlorn little smile--or at least a smile that would have been "little" if his mouth had not been so wide.

"What a queer little thing!" cried Myra. "I should like to have him, only--how _could_ he do all you say?"

"Just listen," said the Witch, pulling a string.

"William I., 1066--William II., 1087--Henry I., 1100--Stephen, 1135...." said the Memory-Saver, solemnly.

Myra danced with delight.

"Oh, he's splendid!" she cried. "He's just what I want. I never can remember dates. Oh, how much does he cost? I'm afraid I haven't enough money."

"I'm sure you haven't," said the Witch. "I wouldn't part with him for untold gold."

"Then it's no use," said Myra, sadly. "I haven't even got _told_ gold, only three shillings and twopence-ha'penny."

"You've got something else that will do better," said the Witch, coaxingly. "Hasn't your brother a large collection of moths and butterflies?"

"Yes," said Myra, looking rather puzzled; "but what has that to do with it?"

"Show me the top drawer of his cabinet, dear," said the Witch.

Myra walked to the cabinet, still wondering, drew out the top drawer, and took it to the window.

The Witch looked up and down the long rows of moths, each with its wings outspread on a separate pin. At last she picked out a great death's-head, and looked at it lovingly. It was a beautiful specimen, just what she wanted for her latest potion, a wonderful mixture that would enable you to turn fifteen cart-wheels on a cobweb without breaking it. "I'll give you the Memory-Saver for this," she cried, eagerly.

"Oh, but it isn't mine!" said Myra, hastily pulling back the drawer.

"It's your brother's, dear," coaxed the Witch. "You know he would not mind."

"He would," said Myra; "it's his best specimen; he told me so yesterday."

"Well, it does him no good in the drawer," pleaded the Witch; "and the Memory-Saver would prevent your being scolded and punished for not knowing your lessons, as you are almost every day. Besides, you could easily save your pocket-money and buy him another moth."

"They're so dear!" sighed Myra. "But grandma always gives me half a sovereign at Christmas. Well, if you like----"

Myra always maintains that she never gave the Witch permission to take the moth; but, as she spoke, they both vanished, and Myra only saw the drawer with the big gap in its row of moths where the death's-head had been, and the Memory-Saver grinning ecstatically at her from the window-sill. Poor little fellow; he was _so_ glad to get away from the Witch's pocket.

Myra's first thought was to move the pins of the other moths, so as to fill up the big gap.

"Then perhaps he won't notice it's gone," she said to herself; "and, as the Witch said, it didn't do him any good in the drawer."

Then she took up the little Memory-Saver and examined him curiously. He was a funny little creature--funnier than ever just now, for he was trying to express his joy at his change of mistresses, which produced a violent commotion in all his tags, and considerably enlarged his mouth. Myra couldn't help laughing, but as she was rather afraid of offending the Memory-Saver, she begged his pardon immediately, and made him a comfortable seat on some books on the table.

"Now, Memory-Saver," she said, "I'm going to read my lessons aloud to you, as the Witch told me. Then you'll know them all, won't you?"

The Memory-Saver nodded so emphatically, that he fell off the books. Myra picked him up, examined him anxiously to see if he were hurt, and, finding he was not, sat him down again.

"I've got two lots of lessons to do," she said, mournfully, "yesterday's and to-day's. Could you do both at once, or would it strain you too much?"

The Memory-Saver shook himself off his seat this time, in his eagerness to assure her he could do twenty lots if necessary. When he was once more settled comfortably, Myra began to read. The Memory-Saver sat contentedly absorbing French, and geography, and tables.

"I wonder if you really know it all," said Myra, gravely, when she had finished. "No, don't nod any more, or you will fall off again. I'll just try one string." She took him up, found the one marked "Tables," and gave it a gentle tug.

"Once nine is nine, twice nine are eighteen, three times nine are twenty-seven," said the Memory-Saver, glibly.

"Stop! Stop! that will do!" cried Myra, delighted. "Don't use it all up before to-morrow."

The next thing was to find somewhere to keep her new treasure--some place where no one could find him; for Myra felt certain that the stupid grown-up people would not approve of her imp, or see his usefulness as clearly as she did.

"They always say, 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again,' and 'You must cultivate your memory,' when I tell them I can't remember my lessons," she said to herself. "They would take the Memory-Saver away from me if they found him. I must put it somewhere so that they _can't_ find him."

Such a place was not easy to find, but at last Myra fixed on the top of the wardrobe in her bedroom.

"They only dust there at spring cleaning time," she said to herself, "and I can move him then."

So she filled a box with cotton-wool, put the Memory-Saver in it, and placed it on top of the wardrobe.

"Are you quite comfortable?" she asked; and the Memory-Saver almost nodded himself out of his box in his joy. It was Paradise after the Witch's pocket.

"What a good thing he doesn't want anything to eat," thought Myra, noticing with satisfaction that the woodwork of the wardrobe quite hid him from anyone below. "The Witch said he feeds on the lessons. How horrible! _I_ shouldn't like French verbs for breakfast, and grammar for dinner. They can't be satisfying, but anyhow, they're easy to get. I always have more than I want."

For some days the Memory-Saver was a great success. Myra put him carefully in her pocket before she went to school, and pulled the right string when she was called up to say her lessons. His voice was rather a sing-song, but that couldn't be helped. Miss Prisms, the schoolmistress, sent home to Myra's delighted mother a report that her little girl was making wonderful progress in everything but arithmetic and writing. In these, alas, the Memory-Saver could not help her. He could say tables, and weights and measures, but could not do sums in his head, for the simple reason that he had no head.

At first he was very happy, for Myra took great care of him; but by degrees she grew careless. She found out he was quite as useful when treated roughly as when treated kindly, and as it was less trouble to treat him roughly, she did so.

"Why can't you do mental arithmetic?" she asked him, severely, one day when she had got into trouble over her sums. "Aren't you ashamed to be so ignorant, you little imp?"

The Memory-Saver waved his little tags in a wild attempt to explain that it was because he hadn't got a mind, only two little pink eyes, a big mouth, and a lot of little partitions inside him to keep the different kinds of knowledge apart. Unhappily the many bumps he had had lately had been very bad for his internal constitution, even if the bruises had not shown outside; the partitions were beginning to leak. All this he tried to explain by waving his little arms and legs. But Myra was unsympathetic and did not understand him. She scolded him heartily, and was not even melted by the little green tears that trickled from his little pink eyes into his big mouth. But she was to be punished for it. The poor little Memory-Saver had to remember all that was said to him whether he liked it or not, and so, when Myra pulled the geography string next morning in school, he began: "England is bounded on the north by Scotland.... why can't you do mental arithmetic?... on the south by the English Channel ... aren't you ashamed ... on the east by the German Ocean ... to be so ignorant ... and on the west by the Irish Sea ... you little imp ... and St. George's Channel."

"Myra!" gasped Miss Prisms, and for at least two minutes could say no more.

"I--I--didn't mean anything," stammered Myra, blushing crimson and ready to cry.