[ Anonymous / Sagacity and Fidelity of the Dog ]
This uncredited work appears to have been first published in 1840 by the New York firm of Kiggins and Kellog. It was reprinted several times, clearly capitalizing — as so many similar works were — on the increasingly popular understanding of dogs as more than mere "brutes," part of the Victorian re-imagining of the relationship between humans and the natural world, with the human/dog bond undergoing a particularly robust reconstruction.
This brief (24 pages) book for young readers contains one anecdote of a dog rescuing people from the water, though the breed of that dog is never specified. In only one of its dozens of anecdotes is any dog ever explicitly identified as a Newfoundland:
A gentleman, owning a fine Newfoundland dog, stopping at a public hotel, one morning offered him some brandy toddy. Lion, as he was called, was young and inexperienced, and confiding. It was his first temptation, and like many a silly young man, he yielded. The result was that he became much excited, and performed various un- dogly antics, peculiar to man and brute in that state. The next day the temptation was renewed. Lion put his paw languidly up to his head, as much as to say — " Excuse me, if you please — the brandy I drank yesterday, gave me a headache." (7)