2 JANUARY 1897, Page 24

A DOG-STORY.

pro THE EDITOR OP THE *SPICTAT03:1 send you an account of an incident that occurred yesterday evening. I had gone over to Fareham to spend Christmas with ray sister and brother-in-law and their children, and had taken with me my dog, a fox-terrier, a stoutish strong dog with rather a large head. In the evenipg we were all together in a room where there was a Christmas tree for the children, and the door of the room was a jir. Towards the end of our entertainment, when the presents had been distributed, and we were standing about the room, there was heard a knocking at the door, and one of the maid- servants standing nearest to the door opened it and was frightened by an apparition. "0, Lor' ! whatever is this ? " she said; and there advanced into the room a bedroom water. jug, the bottom of the jug first, with the body of a white dog at the other end of it. The jug and the body came up to me, and then I saw that my dog Pincher' had put his head into the jug and could not get it out, and in this dire strait had sought me that I might extricate him from his difficulty. At the top of the broad part of the jug was a hole about four or five inches in diameter, through which he could see. He had evidently broken the jug in his attempts to get his head out of it. The dog was quite quiet. I took hold of the jug and tried to draw his head out, but could not do so. I put my hand through the hole he had made in the jug (an earthen- ware), smoothed his ears, and tried to draw his head through the top of the jug, but this was impossible ; 'Pincher' had got his head in, but I could not draw it out. At last I had to send for a poker and break the mouth of the jug, and so extricated 'Pincher' from his ridiculous position. All the while the dog stood quietly, and bore the hammering of the jug with the poker very well indeed. The housemaid then explained how she had brought the jug down from one of the bedrooms, and had left it in the kitchen just before she came in to the Christmas tree. 'Pincher,' feeling thirsty, had left the room with the Christmas tree, where he was with us, had gone into the kitchen, and there seeing the jug, had thought there must be water in it, bad put his head into it to try to get a drink, and then finding no water and that he could not get his head out, had lifted the jug from the corner where it had been placed, taken it up to a chair in front of the kitchen fire, there broken a hole in the top of the broad part of the jag against the seat of the chair, where the pieces were afterwards

found, and so had been enabled to see his way, through the hole, up a couple of steps from the kitchen through a passage to the dining-room, through that room and the hall to the room where we were assembled.—I am, Sir, &e.,

Fort Grange, Gosport, December 26th. J. R. H. ALLEN.