Page:Saunders - Beautiful Joe, 1893.djvu/9

8 call "dumb," and the sign language of the lower orders of these dependent beings. The church owes it to her mission to preach and to teach the enforcement of the "bird’s nest commandment"; the principle recognized by Moses in the Hebrew world, and echoed by Cowper in English poetry, and Burns in the "Meadow Mouse," and by our own Longfellow in songs of many keys.

Kindness to the animal kingdom is the first, or a first principle in the growth of true philanthropy. Young Lincoln once waded across a half-frozen river to rescue a dog, and stopped in a walk with a statesman to put back a bird that had fallen out of its nest. Such a heart was trained to be a leader of men, and to be crucified for a cause. The conscience that runs to the call of an animal in distress, is girding itself with power to do manly work in the world.

The story of "Beautiful Joe" awakens an intense interest, and sustains it through a series of vivid incidents and episodes, each of which is a lesson. The story merits the widest circulation, and the universal reading and response accorded to "Black Beauty." To circulate it is to do good; to help the human heart as well as the creatures of quick feelings and simple language.

When, as one of the committee to examine the manuscripts offered for prizes to the Humane Society, I read the story, I felt that the writer had a higher motive than to compete for a prize; that the story was a stream of sympathy that flowed from the heart; that it was genuine; that it only needed a publisher who should be able