Or, watchful for the lab'ring swain,
From lurking rats secures the grain?
For this, if he rewards bestow,
Why should your heart with gall o'erflow?
Why pine my happiness to see,
Since there's enough for you and me?'
'Thy words are just,' the Farmer cried,
And spurned the Spaniel from his side."
And, again, the same idea occurs in Gay's fable of the "Man, the Cat, the Dog, and the Fly." The Cat solicits aid from the Man in the social state.
"'Well, Puss,' says Man, 'and what can you
To benefit the public do?'
The Cat replies, 'These teeth, these claws,
With vigilance shall serve the cause.
The Mouse, destroy'd by my pursuit,
No longer shall your feasts pollute;
Nor Rats, from nightly ambuscade,
With wasteful teeth your stores invade.
'I grant,' says Man, 'to general use
Your parts and talents may conduce;
For rats and mice purloin our grain,
And threshers whirl the flail in vain;
Thus shall the Cat, a foe to spoil,
Protect the farmers' honest toil.'"
Mr. Ruskin says, "There is in every animal's eye a dim image and gleam of humanity, a flash of strange life through which their life looks at and up to our great mystery of command over them, and
