Knitting-Work; A Web of Many Textures, Wrought (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PETS. It is an amiable human weakness, is the love of pets; and the one who " crunches " them in his heart, as Gruff and Tackleton did the crickets on his hearth, has little affection for anything else. The love that one expends on pets is auxiliary to a higher and holier affection, and does not take from it; as it may be classed with loves of kindred and friends, that may be infinite in their scope, and yet be consistent with the one grand central affection, and strengthen and sanctify it. Pets come in many forms. The heart loves dogs, and birds, and flowers, and at times queer objects become invested with an interest which almost takes the phase of disease. A sweet little human pet of our own, that now rests in a land where love is the life it lives, unalloyed with the pains that marred it here, had a strange proclivity for toads. The little creature loved everything that lived, but in the summer-time it was her delight to visit the garden and find her uncouth favorites, and watch their ungainly movements with a pleasure that one might expend on a rose or a canary. A little book was published, a few years since, by Grace Greenwood, called " History of my Pets." We have a thumbed and soiled copy of that book, which money could not buy. It was owned by another pet of ours, who, years ago, went down the dark valley and left us. It was a solace to him in all his hours of trouble and pain. The sight of that book mollified his grief, and his sobs would subside to smiles as his eyes rested on the pictures. The fancy has been cherished that the loving spirit still rests about the book, and hence it becomes a pet in itself, sacred-from the contamination of use. From its pages the beautiful brown eyes seem to look up, and the cheerful laugh sounds again in the glee of delighted childho...