Without doubt I am a benevolent character: the grudge gratuitous to
my nature is unknown: I never take offence where no offence is given.
Hence, on most animals I look with complacency--for most animals never
intermeddle with my comfort--and on only a few with antipathy, for only
a few so behave as to excite it. High up on the list of the latter--I
was going to say at the very top, but that pestering, pertinacious fly
impudently alighting, through pure mischief alone, on the tickle-tortured
tip of--but he’s gone--no, he’s back--there now I have him under my hat
at last--tut! he’s out again under the rim--up with the window and away
with him! At the head, then, ay, at the very head--how my grievances come
crowding on my brain!--I unhesitatingly place that thrice-confounded
breed of curs, colleys, mongrels, or whatever else they may be called,
with which the rural regions of this therein much-afflicted country are
infested. The milk of my humanity--yea, I may say the cream, for such
it was with me--has in respect to them been changed to very gall--an
unmitigable hostility has possessed me, which--did not the scars of
the wofully-remembered salting, scrubbing, scarifying, and frying (to
say nothing of two months’ maintenance of an hospital establishment of
poultices and plasters), to which my better leg was twice submitted,
counsel me to mingle discretion with my ire--would absolutely make me
turn Don Quixote for their extirpation.
Let flighty philosophers frolic as they list with the flimsy phantasies
no optics save their own can spy--let political economists prate about
public problems, till other people’s pates are nearly as addled as their
own--let flaming patriots propound and placid placemen promise this,
that, and t’other, as grievous burdens or great concessions; but let men
of sense give heed to things of substance--let them exclaim with me,
“Out upon all abstract gammon--out upon all squabbling about what we can
only hear, but neither see nor feel, taste nor smell--bodily boons--real
redress--and first and foremost, ‘to the lamp-post’ with the curs!” I
have suffered more at their teeth, both in blood and broad-cloth, than
all the benefactions I have ever received at the hands of any government
would balance. The inviolable independence of British subjects, forsooth!
the parental guardianship of the constitution, the security for life
and person--faugh!--away with the big inanities, so long as a peaceful
pedestrian cannot take an airing along a highway, much less adventure
on a devious ramble, without exposing person and personalities to the
cruel mercies of a tribe of half-starved tykes issuing from every cabin,
scrambling over every half-door, and almost throttling themselves in
their emulous ambition to be the first to tatter the ill-starred wight
who has stumbled on their haunts. Let no one urge in their behalf
that they are faithful to the misguided men who own them: so much the
worse, since in their small system, fidelity to one must needs manifest
itself in malice, hatred, and uncharitableness to every creature else,
dead or alive. No, there is no redeeming trait--they are _curs_,
essentially biting, barking, cantankrous, crabbed, sneaking, snarling,
treacherous, bullying, cowardly _curs_, and nothing else. This, under all
circumstances, I undertake to maintain against all gainsayers, though
at the same time I am free to confess that I write under considerable
excitement, having just returned from the country (whither--besotted
mortal not to be content with the flag way of a street, and the scenery
of brick and mortar--I had repaired, forsooth, for air, exercise, and
rural sketching) with a couple of new coats, to say nothing of trousers,
curtailed beyond recovery, a bandaged shin smarting beyond description,
and a host of horrid hydrophobic forebodings consequent thereon. It
chanced that in an evil hour I made an engagement with an ailing friend,
whose house was situate in what I may emphatically term a most _canine_
locality, which constrained me to make several calls upon him. Unhappily
it was only approachable by one road, the sides of which were here and
there dotted with a clutch of cabins, in each of which was maintained a
standing force of the aforesaid pests. This ambushed defile, about three
miles in length, dire necessity compelled me to traverse thrice, and
never did general more considerately undertake a march through a hostile
country, or an enemy more vigilantly guard a pass therein, than did I
and they respectively. On each and all of these occasions have I debated
with myself whether I should not fetch a secure though sinuous compass
through the fields, even with the addition of a few miles and other
discomforts to my walk; but as often--with honest, though, as I look upon
my leg, with melancholy pride I write it--did my pluck preserve me from
so disgraceful a detour. What! my indignant manhood would exclaim, shall
I, one of the lords of the creation--shall I, who have dared and have
accomplished so and so--recalling some of my most notable exploits by
flood and field, in crossing the Channel and cantering in the Park--shall
I, one of her majesty’s liege subjects, a grand jury cess-payer and a
freeholder to boot, be driven from the highway which I pay to support,
and obliged to skulk like a criminal from view, scramble over walls and
splutter through swamps, daub my boots, rend mayhap my tights, and risk
other contingencies, and all by reason of such vile scrubs? No, perish
the thought!--though their name be Legion, and their nature impish, I
will face them, ay, and write the fear of me upon their hides too, if
they dare molest me--that I will. Thus spoke the man within me, as I
fiercely griped my cane; and if, as I cooled, an occasional shrinking of
the calves of my legs in fancied supposition of a tooth inserted therein,
betokened aught like quailing, I recalled Marlborough’s saying on the
eve of battle, “How this little body trembles at what this great soul is
about to perform!” and felt that I too was exemplifying that loftiest
courage in which the infirmity of the flesh succumbs to the vigour of the
spirit.
Decided by some such discipline to run the gauntlet, and in a state of
temper alternating between war and peace, inclining, as I remarked,
strange contradiction! to the former when the latter was in prospect, and
to the latter when the former, I proceeded in guarded vigilance. “Hope
deferred maketh the heart sick,” no doubt, but in my case evil deferred
doth oftentimes as much. The substantial presence of danger for me,
before its fearful imminence--the real onset of a canine crew, before the
terrible suspense of passing the open den in which haply they lay wait,
the shrill gamut of attack splitting your ear worse in apprehension than
in action. But attention! yonder is the first position. Egad! I’m in luck
to-day; the coast seems clear, and--the pacific now prevails amain--poor
devils, I won’t make any ruction.
“Ever follow peace
If you’d live at ease,”
saith the tuneful proverb, and I’ll pass inoffensively if I can. Ay,
i’faith, I may well say _if I can_, for if my eyes are worth a turnip,
yonder is an outpost stretched before that sty. No, I’m wrong, it is a
young pig--worthy little fellow, would I had the craft of Circe to change
every cur in the land into your similitude! A grunt before a snarl, a
snore before a snap any day. But what am I gabbling about?--there is
evil at hand indeed, for yonder is a lurching devil squatted behind
that stone, and no mistake. But softly: he seems asleep, and I may
perchance steal past unnoticed--about as probable, my present experience
assures me, as that you could ring my well-bred friend Piggie without
an acknowledgment--he is sole sentry, and if I can but bilk him, I’ll
do. Vain hope--he is waking, he is giving a preparatory stretch to his
limbs and to his jaws, and, miserable sinner that I am! I’m in for it.
But there is yet a single chance--I’ll try the magic of the human eye:
there is wonder-working majesty, they say, in it. Did I not myself see
Van Amburgh’s brutes blench before it?--am not I too a man?--ay, and
I’ll let them see it. Whereupon, with the most astounding corrugation
of my brows I could accomplish, I fixed my grim regards upon the cur,
expecting to see him sneak in awe away as I drew nigh. But, alas! for
the majesty of man, in a pinch like this let me tell him it is but a
sorry safeguard--the veriest whelp in the land will bandy surly looks,
and haply something worse, in its despite: a cudgel or a “hardy,” I now
say, on such an emergency, before the most confounding countenance that
ever frowned beneath a diadem. The foe, then, recking but little my
display of the tremendous, gave a fierce alarm, while in the vehemence
of his wrath he described three circles, his hind legs being the centre,
which brought the whole posse of aids and abettors fast and furious into
view. And now commenced the fray in earnest: beleaguered on every side,
my blood, not to speak boastfully, rose with the great occasion: my
tongue gave vigorous utterance to my fury, and my cane swept gallantly
from right to left and from left to right, though from the wariness
with which, ’mid all their fuss and clamour, the war was waged by my
assailants, it was but seldom that a shrill yelp piercing through the
din announced its collision with flesh and blood. Never was man more
thoroughly put to it. As I made a dash forward upon one, my unprotected
rear was promptly invested by another: my only security lay in the
rapidity of my evolutions, and considering I am a man five feet five
in height and fifteen stone in weight, I fairly take credit to myself
for performances in this line, which poor Joe Grimaldi himself were he
alive could not eclipse. But a man’s sinews are not of steel, nor are
his lungs as tough as a pair of bellows, and under my extraordinary
exertions I speedily began to think of vacating a field whereon nothing
but a barren display of prowess without satisfaction was to be reaped.
Accordingly, all my craft in strategy was put in practice, and by a
most dexterous combination of manœuvres--now advancing, now receding,
now stooping _as if_ to seize a stone (incomparable among expedients in
canine encounters), for the road here of course was as bare of them as a
barn-floor, and now feigning to fling it--I at length contrived to draw
the battle from their own ground, and their pugnacity being inversely
as their distance from home, had the relief, for by this time I was
blowing like a grampus, of seeing them retire in detachments, giving
volleys in token of triumph and defiance so long as I remained in view.
This brisk affair concluded with the loss only of a mouthful or two of
my coat-tails, and the gain of a few trifling transparencies in the
legs of my trousers--thank my boots, I have not to add in those of my
person--I proceeded to the scene of my next “passage at arms,” about half
a mile off. So ruffled was I that at first, after a few score peghs and
puffs restorative, I bustled bravely on, desiring nothing so much as an
opportunity of wreaking my wrath on some of the odious race, to which
purpose I providently deposited a few pretty pebbles in my pocket.
But I am pre-eminently a reasoning man, in whom the reign of passion is
but brief, and discretion had so far recovered its rightful ascendency
as I drew nigh the next “picket,” that I began to think it more prudent,
more benevolent I mean, to bottle up, or repress I should say, my
indignation, and try what the “gentle charities,” a benign demeanour and
a pleasant salutation, might avail in the way of securing a peaceful
transit. With this aim I threw a prodigious amount of amiability (if
somewhat more than I felt, Heaven forgive the hypocrisy) into my
countenance, and accompanied a few familiar fillips of my finger with a
most honied, and, as I thought, captivating phraseology of address, to
a sinister-faced wretch who lay recumbent on the nearest threshold. But
it would not do: up bounced the vile ingrate with obstreperous bay; his
myrmidons were forthcoming on the instant, and in a jiffey I, a grave,
reserved, and middle-aged man, a short, stout, and not very well-winded
man, was in the melée once more, yerking my heels out fore and aft,
whacking right and left, puffing, blowing, and altogether cutting such
uncouth capers as verily it shames me now to think upon. Whether or
not it was that my resentment, and proportionably thereto my prowess,
were aggravated by the flagrant ingratitude displayed, I distributed
my “dissuaders” on this occasion with such distinguished emphasis as
well as science, as speedily to create a considerable diversion in my
favour, and make more than one repentant sinner yelp out “devil take the
hindmost,” in such vigorous style as to bring a bevy of grandam fogies
in wrath from their chimney corners. “An what are yees abusin’ the poor
craythurs for, that wouldn’t harm nobody in the world at all at all,
barrin’ a pig or so? It’s a wonder yees been’t ashamed to treat the poor
dumb (!) brutes that way, that niver did an ill hand’s turn to us nor one
belonging to us, an’ it’s longer we’re acquaint with them than you. Come
here, Trig--come here, Daisy--in there, Snap--down there, Peerie,” and so
forth. Recrimination on such opponents was out of the question; and this
brush over in rather creditable style, I made all speed from the united
clamour of the offended crones and their injured innocents.
The next sore point I happily passed in the company of an iron-nerved,
long-thonged carman, whom I providently engaged in conversation at the
crisis. This fellow minded them no more than if they had been so many
sods of turf, nor in truth did they, having probably tasted erewhile the
crusty quality of such a customer, pay much regard to him, although not
a few ill-favoured glances were cast askew at my poor self, as under his
lee I stoutly stumped along; and some ill-suppressed growls and spiteful
grins gave me to understand that I owed my safety solely to my company. A
jolly beggarman--alack-a-day! that I should ever stand in need of such a
convoy--to whose nimble fictions I gave ear for the nonce with singular
philanthropy, was my next protector, and a sixpence paid for the safe
conduct, at which rate I am pretty confident, had he seen how matters
lay, he would have offered to trudge it at my elbow far enough, for the
sturdy rogue cared not a snuff for them had they been twice as numerous;
and in a few seconds after, I saw him with a flourish of his duster enter
a hut in the midst of them all.
But it is needless to dive any farther into the budget of adventures
which then and there befell me, except to mention, as a sort of set-off,
a notable retaliation that I right happily achieved on one of my
tormentors. After a scuffle, contested on both sides with considerable
toughness, I was retiring from a sort of drawn battle, when I espied a
short-legged, long-backed, crook-knee’d, lumpish-looking rascal scuttling
along through a field at a prodigious pace. He had heard the well-known
gathering-note when at a distance with some turf-cutters in a bog, and,
eager for sport, namely, a pluck at my inexpressibles, lost no time in
making for the scene. The affair was, however, over before he arrived
upon the ground; but determined that his “trevally” should not be for
nought, he gave me immediate chase up the road, reserving his fire as
if intent on close combat alone, and altogether showing such an earnest
business-like way with him, as made me set him down as a singularly
crabbed customer. On he came at a rate that soon left me nothing for
it, was I ever so much disinclined, but to face about and stand at
bay. Hereupon, however--so conversant with currish character was I now
become--a much increased ostentation of action upon his part, accompanied
with a much diminished rate of progression, and a most superfluous
discharge of barks, let me into a gratifying little secret. “Ha, my
gentleman,” thought I, “Is this the way the land lies? You’re not just
so stout a hero as you would fain be thought; and as, i’faith, I have
no notion of being made sport of by such small ware as you, I’ll just
try if I cannot give you a lesson worth the learning.” With that I again
showed him my heels, which relieved him of his rather awkward suspense,
and, turning round a corner, dexterously managed in a few moments to
have my lad ensconced in a pretty angle, with a deep pool behind him,
and a high stone wall on either side. Even in the height of my triumph
and wrath, I could not help noticing the extraordinary mutations the
outwitted ettercap underwent at this astounding juncture. The last yelp
perished incomplete: a dismal wonder-what-ails-him bewilderment, horror,
cowardice, despair, supplied a sort of prelibation of “the condign” my
injured honour and outraged rights craved in expiation. Before him I
flourished my cane in a fashion that made the very thought of contact
therewith terrible--behind him lay the expectant plunge-bath of which
he, in common with all his tribe, entertained a most hydrophobic horror.
Thrice he seemed to contemplate an eruption, and thrice my waving weapon
turned him to the watery gulf behind, and in mortal misery he appeared
to balance their respective terrors. A cogent persuasive delivered
rearward in handsome style, created a partial preponderance in favour
of the latter. One paw was passed over the fearful brim; a timely
reiteration sent the other after; the avenging rod was upraised to give
the grand finale, when his outstretched tail suggested a device, which I
rapturously seized on to prevent that gradual fulfilment of inevitable
fate which the cowardly caitiff seemed to meditate. In the fervour of my
career I even laid hands on this appendage of my once so dreaded foe,
and swinging him aloft, to give him a proper elevation, as well as a
momentary view of the murky abyss to which a few aërial evolutions were
to bring him, dismissed him by a most righteous retribution to his fate.
A gurgling yelp announced the crisis of the plump, and a few moments
after, snorting and kicking, wriggling and splashing, in a perfect
frenzy of amaze, the culprit emerged, and made way like mad for the
bank. Tempering justice with mercy, with a noble magnanimity I allowed
him to scramble up to the road, which he did with most astonishing
alacrity, and, without even a shake to his bedraggled coat, or more than
a glance of horror at myself, scurried homeward at a rate with which
even his pursuit could not compare: _he_ never troubled me again. With
this beautiful illustration of retributive justice--oh, that I could but
make it universal!--I will wind up the relation of my misfortunes and
feats on this plaguy but memorable day, which I have selected--may my
vanity be pardoned--as exhibiting myself, though I say it who shouldn’t
say it, in rather a distinguished point of view, as being devoid of
certain humiliating circumstances with which on most other occasions my
lot was accompanied, and as being at the same time sufficient, without
wanton trifling with my own feelings and those of others, to make the
resentment of all who are susceptible of sympathy with their kind burn
fierce against these pestiferous persecutors of our race. I have said
enough to show, that if we care to maintain that native supremacy which
these contumacious rebels make but light of questioning, if we wish to
rescue our order from the disgrace and contumely from such vile sources
cast upon it, the time for action, systematic, conjoint, national action,
has now arrived. “Union,” say the sages of the rostrum with admirable
discernment, “Union is strength.” Let us act on the profound discovery;
let combination be the order of the day; let the cry of “Down with the
cynocracy!” ring resistless through the land; let pistol pellets and
pounded glass be in every one’s possession; let the legislature be
simultaneously bombarded; let the squire whose game is incontinently
gobbled up in embryo, the wayfarer whose person and all that hangs
thereon is supinely compromised, the philanthropist who would augment
human happiness, the humanist who would diminish dumb-brute suffering,
the vindicator of the pig, the cat, the donkey, and all the tribe of
cur-bebitten animals, ay, even the friends (if such besotted beetleheads
there be) of the detested breed themselves, who hold it better “not to
be” than “to be” in semi-starvation, in mangy malevolence, in spiteful
pugnacity, in the perpetual distribution of snarls, bites, and barks,
and receipt of cuffs, kicks, and cudgels--let all and every of these
great and various parties agitate, agitate, agitate, petition, petition,
petition, that such comprehensive measures as the enormity of the
case demands be forthwith adopted for the correction, abatement, or
abolition of this national scourge, by taxation, suspension, submersion,
decapitation, or deportation, as to the “collective wisdom” may most
advisable appear.