Four years, and didst thou stay above
The ground, which hides thee now, but four?
And all that life, and all that love,
Were crowded Geist, into no more.
That loving heart, that patient soul,
Had they indeed no longer span
To run their course and reach their goal,
And read their homily to man?
KAISER DEAD. April 6, 1887.
Kai’s bracelet tail, Kai’s busy feet,
Were known to all the village street.
“What, poor Kai dead?” say all I meet;
“A loss indeed.”
Oh for the croon, pathetic, sweet,
Of Robin’s reed!
Six years ago I brought him down,
A baby dog, from London town;
Round his small throat of black and brown
A ribbon blue,
And touched by glorious renown
A dachshund true.
His mother most majestic dame,
Of blood unmixed, from Potsdam came,
And Kaiser’s race we deemed the same—
No lineage higher.
And so he bore the imperial name;
But ah, his sire!
Soon, soon the day’s conviction bring:
The collie hair, the collie swing,
The tail’s indomitable ring,
The eye’s unrest—
The case was clear; a mongrel thing
Kai stood confest.
But all those virtues which commend
The humbler sort who serve and tend,
Were thine in store, thou faithful friend.
What sense, what cheer,
To us declining tow’rd our end,
A mate how dear!
Thine eye was bright, thy coat it shone;
Thou hadst thine errands off and on;
In joy thy last morn flew; anon
A fit. All’s over;
And thou art gone where Geist hath gone,
And Toss and Rover.
Well, fetch his graven collar fine,
And rub the steel and make it shine,
And leave it round thy neck to twine,
Kai, in thy grave.
There of thy master keep that sign
And this plain stave.
Miss Cobbe is a devoted, outspoken friend of all animals. She says: “I
have, indeed, always felt much affection for dogs—that is to say, for
those who exhibit the true dog character, which is far from being the
case with every canine creature. Their sageness, their joyousness, their
transparent little wiles, their caressing and devoted affection, are to
me more winning—even, I may say, more really and intensely _human_ (in
the sense in which a child is human)—than the artificial, cold, and
selfish characters one meets too often in the guise of ladies and
gentlemen.”
She had a fluffy white dog she was extremely fond of, and has written
several chapters on dogs, kindness to animals, the horrors of
vivisection, etc. Read False Hearts and True, The Confessions of a Lost
Dog, and Science in Excelsis, and you will realize how she appreciates
the rights and the noble traits of the brute creation, and how her own
great heart has gone out to her pets. She closes one article, Dogs whom
I have Met, with these words: “One thing I think must be clear: until a
man has learned to feel for all his sentient fellow-creatures, whether
in human or in brute form, of his own class and sex and country, or of
another, he has not yet ascended the first step toward true
civilization, nor applied the first lesson from the love of God.”
Edward Jesse, in his book, now rare and hard to obtain, on dogs, says,
“Histories are more full of samples of the fidelity of dogs than of
friends.” A French writer declares that, excepting women, there is
nothing on earth so agreeable or so necessary to the comfort of man as
the dog. Think of the shepherd, his flock collected by his indefatigable
dog, who guards both them and his master’s cottage at night; satisfied
with a slight caress and coarsest food. The dog performs the service of
a horse in more northern regions, while in Cuba and other hot countries
is the terror of the runaway negroes. In destruction of wild beasts or
the less dangerous stag, or in attacking the bull, the dog has shown
permanent courage. He defends his master, saves from drowning, warns of
danger, serves faithfully in poverty and distress, leads the blind. When
spoken to, does his best to hold conversation by tail, eyes, ears;
drives cattle to and from pasture, keeps herds and flocks within bounds,
points out game, brings shot birds, turns a spit, draws provision carts
and sledges, likes or abhors music, detecting false notes instantly;
announces strangers, sounds a note of warning in danger, is the last to
forsake the grave of a friend, sympathizes and rejoices with every mood
of his master. The collie is the only dog who has a reputation for
piety, his liking to go to kirk and his proper behaviour there being
well known. Whenever Stanislaus, the unfortunate King of Poland, wrote
to his daughter, he always concluded with “Tristram, my companion in
misfortune, licks your feet.” That one friend stuck by in his adversity.
We see inherited tendencies in dogs as in children—what Paley calls “a
propensity previous to experience and independent of instruction”—as
Saint Bernard puppies scratching eagerly at snow, and young pointers
standing steadily on first seeing poultry; a well-bred terrier pup will
show ferocity. The anecdotes of achievements of pet dogs are marvellous.
Leibnitz related to the French Academy an account of a dog he had seen
which was taught to speak, and would call intelligibly for tea, coffee,
chocolate, and made collections of white, shining stones.
We read of dogs who know when Sunday comes; who watch for the butcher’s
cart only at his stated time for appearance; who will beg for a penny to
buy a pie or bun, and then go to the baker’s and purchase; who exercise
forethought and providence, burying bones for future need. Some seem to
have some moral sense, ashamed of stealing, sometimes making
retribution, scolding puppies for stealing meat; others are as depraved
as human beings, slipping their collars and undoing the collar of
another dog to go marauding, then returning, put their heads back into
the collar.[1]
Footnote 1:
Darwin said, “Since publishing The Descent of Man I have got to
believe rather more than I did in dogs having what may be called a
_conscience_.”
Landseer’s dogs used to pose for him with more patience than many other
sitters. Some one said of him that he had “discovered the dog.” He was
so devoted to them that when the wittiest of divines and divinest of
wits (of course I mean Sydney Smith) was asked to sit to him, he
replied, “‘Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?’” The
artist spoke of a Newfoundland who had saved many from drowning as “a
distinguished member of the Humane Society.” Hamerton, in his charming
Chapters on Animals, tells us stories, almost too wonderful for belief,
of some French poodles who came to visit him. These canine guests played
dominoes, sulked when they had to draw from the bank, retired mortified
when beaten; also played cards, were skilful spellers in several
languages, and quick in arithmetic.
Each breed has its own defenders and adherents. Olive Thorne Miller
usually writes of birds or odd pets; but in Home Pets we find a most
interesting tale of a collie, which she gives, to illustrate the
characteristics of that family:
“Nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, in the early days of our nation
and during the French and Indian War, this collie was a great pet in the
family of a colonial soldier, and was particularly noted for his
antipathy to Indians, whom he delighted to track. On one campaign
against the French the dog insisted on accompanying his master, although
his feet were in a terrible condition, having been frozen. During the
fight, which ended in the famous Braddock’s defeat, the collie was
beside his master, but when it was over they had become separated, and
the soldier, concluding that his pet had been killed, went home without
him. Some weeks after, however, the dog appeared in his old home,
separated from the battlefield by many miles and thick forests. He was
tired and worn, but over his feet were fastened neat moccasins, showing
that he had been among Indians, who had been kind to him. Moreover, he
soon showed that he had changed his mind about his former foe, for
neither bribes nor threats could ever induce him to track an Indian. His
generous nature could not forget a kindness, even to please those he
loved enough to seek under so great difficulties.”
This reminds me of several dog stories.
The following interesting letter is published in the London Spectator:
“Being accustomed to walk out before breakfast with two Skye terriers,
it was my custom to wash their feet in a tub, kept for the purpose in
the garden, whenever the weather was wet. One morning, when I took up
the dog to carry him to the tub he bit me so severely that I was obliged
to let him go. No sooner was the dog at liberty than he ran down to the
kitchen and hid himself. For three days he refused food, declined to go
out with any of the family, and appeared very dejected, with a
distressed and unusual expression of countenance.
“On the third morning, however, upon returning with the other dog, I
found him sitting by the tub, and upon coming toward him he immediately
jumped into it and sat down in the water. After pretending to wash his
legs, he jumped out as happy as possible, and from that moment recovered
his usual spirits.
“There appears in this instance to have been a clear process of
reasoning, accompanied by acute feeling, going on in the dog’s mind from
the moment he bit me until he hit upon a plan of showing his regret and
making reparation for his fault. It evidently occurred to him that I
attached great importance to this footbath, and if he could convince me
that his contrition was sincere, and that he was willing to submit to
the process without a murmur, I should be satisfied. The dog, in this
case, reasoned with perfect accuracy, and from his own premises deduced
a legitimate conclusion which the result justified.”
I like to read of the dog who waited on the town clerk of Amesbury for
his license. “The possessor of the dog in question is red-headed George
Morrill, and red-headed George Morrills never (hardly ever) lie, and
from him we learn the following facts: It appears that Mr. Morrill, who
was busy at the time, and desired to have his pet properly licensed,
wrote on a slip of paper as follows: ‘Mr. Collins, please give me my
license. Charlie.’ Inclosing this, with two dollars, in an envelope, he
gave it to the dog, telling him to go to Mr. Collins and get his
license. On arriving at the town clerk’s office he found Mr. Collins
busy, and being a well-bred dog waited until the gentleman was at
liberty, when he made his presence known. Mr. Collins, observing the
envelope in his mouth, took it, and immediately the dog assumed a
sitting posture, remaining thus until the officer made out the proper
license, and, inclosing this in an envelope, handed it to his dogship,
who instantly raised himself to his full length, making a bow with his
head, and, coming down to his natural position, wagged his tail
satisfactorily and departed for home. The dog is well known on the
street for his sagacity and intelligence, but this has rather capped any
of his previous performances.”
One of the best stories about the intelligence of dogs which has been
told for some time was repeated a few days ago by an officer of the
Pennsylvania Railroad Company. He said that one of the men in the
passenger department had a dog that could tell the time of day. The
owner of the dog had a fine clock in his office, and he got into the
habit of making the dog tap with his paw at each stroke of the clock.
After a while the dog did so without being told, and as the clock gave a
little cluck just before striking, the dog would get into position,
prick up his ears, and tap out the time. If the clock had struck one and
a little while afterward his owner imitated the preliminary cluck of the
clock, the dog would give two taps with his paw, and so on for any hour.
He knew just how the hours ran and how many taps to give for each one.
We must of course believe a clergyman’s story of a dog, the Rev. C. J.
Adams, in The Dog Fancier:
“Not ‘Tige,’ concerning whom I have told a number of stories in this
department. Tiger is another dog, and a fine fellow he is. His hair is
short, and he is as black as night. I have met him but once, and that
was at a clericus at the house of his master—the Rev. Peter Claude
Creveling, at Cornwall, N. Y. He is probably four feet and a half long
as to his body. He stands nearly as high as an ordinary table. He has a
fine head—wonderfully large brain chambers. His eyes are extremely
intelligent and expressive. His master loves him with a great,
boisterous love characteristic of the man—who will be a great,
attractive, lovable boy when he is eighty. I greet him, and hope that he
may abide in the flesh till he is one hundred and eighty. But I took up
my pen to write about the dog—not the master. The dog and the master are
well mated. Tiger is the dog for the master, and Mr. Creveling is the
master for the dog. We hardly ever meet but before we are through
shaking hands Mr. Creveling begins telling me something about Tiger.
This occurred, as usual, at a hotel where I was entertaining the clergy
a month or so ago. The story was wonderful, and is vouched for by
reliable witnesses.
“Tiger occupies the same room with Mr. and Mrs. Creveling at night. A
sheet is spread for him on the floor beside the bed. They think as much
of him as they would of a child. When he is restless during the night,
Mr. Creveling will put his hand out and pat his head, speaking to him
soothingly. During the day the sheet on which Tiger sleeps ‘o’ nights’
is kept under a washstand. This much, that what follows may be
understood. Now, on a certain Sunday Mr. and Mrs. Creveling, the young
lady, and all other members of the household were away—excepting Tiger.
He was left locked in the house. When they returned, and Mrs. Creveling
went to her room, she found that Tiger had spent a good portion of the
time of his incarceration in that room and on the bed. The bed was in a
very tumbled and not very clean condition—the condition in which the
occupancy of such a dog would naturally leave it—a condition which any
careful housewife can easily imagine—and which she can not imagine
without a shudder. Mrs. Creveling cried out. Mr. Creveling came running.
After him came Tiger. Mr. Creveling said: ‘Tiger, Tiger, see what you
have done! You have ruined your missie’s bed. Tiger, Tiger, I feel like
crying!’ Tiger’s head and tail both dropped. Without saying another
word, Mr. Creveling went down stairs and into his study, threw himself
on a large sofa, and covered his face and pretended to cry. Tiger, who
had followed him, threw himself down on a rug beside the sofa and cried
too. Mr. Creveling had faith in the dog’s intelligence. He believed that
he had learned a lesson.
“Within a few days the family were all away again. Again Tiger was left
in the house alone. When the family returned, Mrs. Creveling again went
to her room. Tiger had been there again in her absence. He had again
been on the bed. But Tiger’s sheet—the one upon which he slept at night
was there too. And the sheet was spread out, covering the bed. And there
had been no one to spread out the sheet for Tiger. He had spread it out
for himself. Is not here a display of intelligence—of intelligence in
activity in employment—of reason? What had Tiger done? He had put his
nose under the washstand and pulled the sheet out. He had put the sheet
on the bed. He had spread the sheet out over the bed. What had been
Tiger’s train of thought? This, or something very much like it: ‘I want
to lie on that bed because it reminds me of my absent master and
mistress. But I don’t dare to do so. I will give offence if I do so. I
will be punished. Why am I not wanted to lie on the bed? Because I soil
it. What shall I do? There is the sheet—my sheet. They don’t care if I
lie on that. I will spread the sheet over the bed. What a great head I
have!’ The reader understands, of course, that I am not claiming that
Tiger has sufficient command of the English language to even
subjectively express himself as I have represented him. I have only
tried to bring as strongly as possible to the reader’s mind the fact
that a train of thought must have passed through the dog’s mind. And a
train of thought could not pass through his mind if he hadn’t a mind.
Having a mind, then what? He thinks. He reasons. What else? If my mind
is immortal why not Tiger’s? And remember that I can prove the truth of
every detail of this story by three witnesses—Mr. Creveling, his wife,
and his wife’s friend. No court would ask more.”
Jules Janin’s dog made him a literary man. His favourite walk was in
Luxembourg Garden, where he was delighted to see his dog gambol. The dog
made another dog’s acquaintance, and they became so attached to each
other that their masters were brought together and became friends. The
new friend urged him to better his fortunes by writing for the
newspapers, and introduced him to La Lorgnette, from which time he
constantly rose. In 1828 he was appointed dramatic critic of the Journal
des États, and his popularity there lasted undiminished for twenty
years.
London has a home for lost and starving dogs, for the benefit of which a
concert was recently given. Had Richard Wagner been alive, he would have
doubtless bought a box for this occasion. One of the greatest sorrows of
his life was the temporary loss of his Newfoundland dog in London.
Here is a quaint story which shows the gentle Elia in a most
characteristic way: “Just before the Lambs quitted the metropolis,” says
Pitman, “they came to spend a day with me at Fulham and brought with
them a companion, who, dumb animal though he was, had for some time past
been in the habit of giving play to one of Charles Lamb’s most amiable
characteristics—that of sacrificing his own feelings and inclinations to
those of others. This was a large and very handsome dog, of a rather
curious and sagacious breed, which had belonged to Thomas Hood, and at
the time I speak of, and to oblige both dog and master, had been
transferred to the Lambs, who made a great pet of him, to the entire
disturbance and discomfiture, as it appeared, of all Lamb’s habits of
life, but especially of that most favourite and salutary of all—his long
and heretofore solitary suburban walks; for Dash—that was the dog’s
name—would never allow Lamb to quit the house without him, and when out,
would never go anywhere but precisely where it pleased himself. The
consequence was, that Lamb made himself a perfect slave to this dog, who
was always half a mile off from his companion, either before or behind,
scouring the fields or roads in all directions, up and down ‘all manner
of streets,’ and keeping his attendant in a perfect fever of anxiety and
irritation from his fear of losing him on the one hand, and his
reluctance to put the needful restraint upon him on the other. Dash
perfectly well knew his host’s amiable weakness in this respect, and
took a doglike advantage of it. In the Regent’s Park, in particular,
Dash had his _quasi_-master completely at his mercy, for the moment they
got within the ring he used to squeeze himself through the railing and
disappear for half an hour together in the then inclosed and thickly
planted greensward, knowing perfectly well that Lamb did not dare to
move from the spot where he (Dash) had disappeared, till he thought
proper to show himself again. And they used to take this walk oftener
than any other, precisely because Dash liked it, and Lamb did not.”
Beecher said that “in evolution, the dog got up before the door was
shut.” If there were not reason, mirthfulness, love, honour, and
fidelity in a dog, he did not know where to look for them, And Huxley
has devoted much attention to the study of canine ability. He once
illustrated, by the skeleton of the animal being raised on hind legs,
that in internal construction the only difference between man and dog
was one of size and proportion. There was not a bone in one which did
not exist in the other, not a single constituent in the one that was not
to be found in the other, and by the same process he could prove that
the dog had a mind. His own dog was certainly not a mere piece of
animate machinery. He once possessed a dog which he frequently left
among the thousands frequenting Regent’s Park to secrete himself behind
a tree. So soon as the animal found that he had lost his master, he laid
his nose to the ground and soon tracked him to his hiding place. He
believed there was no fundamental faculty connected with the reasoning
powers that might not be demonstrated to exist in dogs. He did not
believe that dogs ever took any pleasure in music; but this seems not to
be always the case. Adelaide Phillips, the famous contralto, told me
that her splendid Newfoundland Cæsar was quite a musician. She gave him
singing lessons regularly. “I see him now,” she said, “his fore paws
resting on my knee. I would say: ‘Now the lesson begins. Look at me,
sir. Do as I do.’ Then I would run down the scale in thirds, and Cæsar,
with head thrown back and swaying from side to side, would really sing
the scale. He would sing the air of The Brook very correctly. But it was
the best sport to see him attempt the operatic.” Here her gestures
became showy and impressive, as if on the stage, and her mimicking of
the dog’s efforts to follow her were comical in the extreme. Sometimes
(so quickly did he catch all the tricks of the profession) he would not
sing until urged again and again. Sometimes he would be “out of voice,”
and make most discordant sounds. He has an honoured grave at her country
home in Marshfield, where Webster also put up a stone in memory of his
horse Greatheart.
Charlotte Cushman loved animals, especially dogs and horses; and her
blue Skye terrier Bushie, with her human eyes and uncommon intelligence,
has a permanent place in the memoirs of her mistress. Miss Cushman would
say, “Play the piano, Bushie,” and Bush knew perfectly well what was
meant, and would go through the performance, adding a few recitative
barks with great gravity and _éclat_. The phrase “human eyes” recalls
what Blackmore, the novelist—who has a genuine, loving appreciation of
our dear dumb animals—says of a dog in Christowell: “No lady in the land
has eyes more lucid, loving, eloquent, and even if she had, they would
be as nothing without the tan spots over them.”
Patti has many pets, and always takes some dog with her on her travels,
causing great commotion at hotels. She also leaves many behind her as a
necessity. She has an aviary at her castle in Wales, and owns several
most loquacious parrots.
Miss Mitford’s gushing eulogy upon one of her numerous dogs is too
extravagant to be quoted at length: “There never was such a dog. His
temper was, beyond comparison, the sweetest ever known. Nobody ever saw
him out of humour, and his sagacity was equal to his temper.... I shall
miss him every moment of my life. We covered his dead body with flowers;
every flower in the garden. Everybody loved him, dear saint, as I used
to call him, and as I do not doubt he now is. Heaven bless him, beloved
angel!”
Mr. Fields writes: “Miss Mitford used to write me long letters about
Fanchon, a dog whose personal acquaintance I had made some time before
while on a visit to her cottage. Every virtue under heaven she
attributed to that canine individual, and I was obliged to allow in my
return letters that since our planet began to spin nothing comparable to
Fanchon had ever run on four legs.”
Mrs. Browning was fond of pets, especially of her dog Flush, presented
by Miss Mitford, which she has immortalized in a sonnet and a long and
exquisite poem: