[ The Fanciers' Journal ]
This animal-fancy weekly, originally entitled The Fanciers' Journal and Poultry Exchange before dropping the latter part of that title although it continued to publish items on pigeons and poultry as well as dogs, was published in Philadelphia, PA, beginning in 1874.
The May 23, 1891, issue carried the following notice, under the title "A Noble Newfoundland," of a Newfoundland saving lives but losing his own:
The following American story comes to us through a foreign source, the Live-Stock Journal: A Newfoundland dog named Hecker has, according to the Courrier des Etats Unis, distinguished himself in the most remarkable way at the St. Elmo Hotel, which is, or rather was, in the town of Eldred (Pennsylvania). This dog was very attached to the hall porter, and slept in his room, which was just behind the office. The hall porter was very given to drink, and in the middle of the night about a month ago a fire broke out in the hotel. The porter was very intoxicated, but the dog succeeded in waking him and literally dragged him to the outer door. Having saved the life of his friend the porter, Hecker rushed back into the building, scratched at the landlord's door and awakened him, and then gave the alarm to all the other inmates of the hotel. A lady, carrying a child in her arms, fell at the bottom of the staircase, and in her precipitation forgot to pick up the child. But Hecker, who had seen the accident, gently lifted the infant by its night dress and restored it to its mother. The heroic dog went back once more to the hotel, but he never emerged again, and his "blackened bones," adds the Courrier des Etats Unis, "were followed to the grave by the many witnesses of this series of heroic acts, and his loss is mourned in the district as might be that of the greatest of philanthropists." (327)