Humanity to Man and Beast.* A few days ago a man who resides in this city put an entrapped rat into a box, poured kerosene on it, and then set the animal on fire. Such ferocity came in part from the assumption that the rat is an avowed enemy of mankind. That smallbrained human being who applied the coaloil assumed that the rats were laying plans for the injury of man's property and happiness. He met the rat as one would meet a highwayman when plying his profession, but he was fined twenty-five dollars and costs. All humane thinkers know that the little animal which this man tortured sustains toward man feelings just as kind as those entertained by the tame pigeon or the gray squirrel. The rat when tamed becomes *Read at the World's Auxiliary Congress, October 11, 1898. one of the most devoted of friends. In the gnawing and destroying which this animal does in man's house and barn it is simply seeking its living just as the robin is seeking its living when it takes cherries from our orchard or berries from the raspberry bush. The fact that rats and mice are unwelcome does not affect their moral character. The rat differs from a nightingale only in his misfortunes. No one can reach the full height of the humane philosophy without realizing first the friendship of the brute world toward man. This feeling is strongest in the domestic animals because it has been called forth and called forward by the long action of evolution; but many of the creatures that are wildest are on the borders of friendship and seem waiting only for man to meet them half way. Two years ago a family spending the summer a few miles from the city caught a young woodchuck. It was resolved to keep it for a pet. In a week it began to eat out of the hands of the children. In less than two weeks it followed the children all over the house. It soon reached great size and weight, but it could not bear separation from the family. It seemed to surpass all creatures except the dog in the power to express friendship. It cried and was miserable except when with the children. The common turtle and the cold-blooded goldfish are susceptible of friendship. Last summer a Chicago man gave a crumb of meat to a little spider in its web. He repeated this a few mornings. Soon the little creature that was not larger than a mustard seed answered to its name and would run out eagerly to meet its big human friend. This affair of the heart continued for six weeks. The big city compelled the human half of the partnership to exchange the little satin web for noisy, stony streets. That spider's brain did not hold Latin or Greek or politics, but it held friendship. In those summer days it had each morning a heart full of hope-hope for meat. After the large man came away, had the little thing any memory and any grief? Last summer a family that went from this city to spend a season at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, soon formed an alliance of love with the ground squirrels and gray squirrels in the adjoining woods. Each day the squirrels and the children drew nearer each other. Before August had passed the acquaintance ripened into love, and the little chipmunks learned to take nuts out of the children's pockets and the gray squirrels were fed from the children's hands. Squirrels and children became chums. In the recent centuries of barbarism the human animal has lived a repellent life. Not only has he been anxious that no dumb brute should venture upon terms of familiarity with him, but the leading male personage of the house was for a long time careful that even the wife and children should know their place. They should temper their friendship with misplaced awe. An English lord rebuked his wife for kissing him when after a long separation she met him at the railway station. She was his second wife and the great man told his new spouse that his |