If thy heart be right, then will every creature be to thee a mirror
of life, and a book of holy doctrine.—THOMAS À KEMPIS.
It would be pleasant to believe it was a proof of a good and tender
nature to delight in pets, but men and women, notorious for cruelty and
bad lives, have been devoted to them, lavishing tenderness, elsewhere
denied. Catullus, the famous Roman poet, wrote a lament for Lesbia’s
Sparrow; Lesbia, the shameless, false-hearted beauty who could weep for
a dead bird, but poison her husband! You often see pretty plaster heads
of Lesbia with the bird perched upon her finger, her face bent toward it
with a look that is a caress. And the poem has not lost its grace or
charm through all the centuries.