14 DECEMBER 1895, Page 15

[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR." 1 SIE,—As I

know your columns are always open to well- authenticated stories of the wonderful gifts of our four-footed friends, I venture to think that you will be interested in the following anecdote. Thirty years ago I was living in St. George's Square, Pimlico, and near me—in Denbigh Street, at a distance of about ten minutes' walk—resided a well-known journalist, Mr. Percy Gregg. He had a little black-and-tan dog, for which I found a home when his master was about to leave London. It was reported to me that Jimmie' always left my house after breakfast. At first some alarm was felt that he would stray; but as be invariably returned after an hour's stroll, I took him to be one of those vagrom" animals who cannot live without a prowl in the streets, and I felt no anxiety. But I ascertained that whenever he went away, he carried off a bone or something edible with him. I watched him one or two mornings, and saw him squeeze through the area-railings, on each occasion carrying a big bone, which he had great difficulty in steering through the iron bars. Being curious about the destination of the food, I made up my mind to follow him. I tracked him to an empty house, next to that in which his former owner bad lived. In a cellar in the area there lived a half-starved, ownerleas terrier, who, I suppose, had once been a friend of Jimmie's,' and whom my dog, in his days of pro- sperity, never forgot. Regularly the good little fellow trotted off to the empty cellar, and divided his morning's meal with his poor friend. The story is told of the great Napoleon riding over one of his battlefields—I don't know whether it was Wagram or Austerlitz—and pointing to a faithful dog watching the body of his dead master, with the words, " That dog teaches us all a lesson of humanity ! " So did ' Jimmie.'—I am, Sir, &c.,