pretending that I am sorry when I am not," replied Mr. Ramsay. "I
haven't seen her for years, and she was nasty to me even when I was a
child, and she was a regular old cat, and no good to herself or anybody
else. I don't see why I should pull a long face and turn crocodile
because she made me her heir to spite Bill, though it comes in most
beautifully for me. I don't mean to keep it all, though I could swell it
considerably if I did. It would be a dirty thing to do, for Bill has
been brought up to expect it and didn't send the valentine at all. I
shall go halves with him; that seems fair all round." Mr. Ketchum agreed
with him, and Mr. Ramsay went on to make further confidences, in which
it appeared that he still cared for Miss Brown, and had "thought an
awful lot about her," and now rejoiced to find himself in a position to
address her if she was still free. Tom Price, coming in, could scarcely
announce that the buggy was at the door for goggling at Mr. Ramsay. The
two men drove rapidly out to Fairfield, talking all the way, and Mr.
Ramsay stared very hard at the Brown mansion and grounds, and got a
pretty welcome from Mabel that warmed his heart not a little. What he
said to Bijou in an interview that evening of four hours is no business
of ours.
It began after quite formal greetings with, "Do you know that you are
looking most awfully well, Miss Brown?" on his part.
"You didn't dream that I cared for you, did you?" said Bijou toward its
close, anxious to reassure herself upon a point that had made the last
two years a bitterness to her.
"Oh, yes, I did. I twigged that long ago," replied he. "That is why I
cut my stick so suddenly. I couldn't support a wife then, and I wasn't
goin' to be thought a fortune-hunter, you know." It must have been that
he was forgiven the sentimental blunder that is worse than a crime,--a
want of frankness,--or how else could they have been married in six
weeks and sailed for England? Mr. Alfred Brown, being in California, did
not witness this ceremony, but Mr. Ketchum did, and "a large and
fashionable company of the _élite_ of Kalsing" (_vide_ the local paper).
And did not Mr. Ketchum give the groom a pair of trotting-horses that
afterward attracted much attention in Hyde Park? and did not Mr. Brown
present the bride with a considerable fortune on her wedding-day, which
her husband insisted should be set apart for her exclusive use and
control?
"Haven't you got any other name than Bijou?" he said to her. "That is a
most absurd name. Bijou Ramsay. What will my people say?"
"I was baptized Ellen," said she, "but I have never been called that."
"Ellen? A nice, sensible name. I shall call you that," he replied, and
kept his word.
And so the immigrant, who thought he had left England forever, went
home in a little while and is living there now in inglorious ease and
somewhat enervating luxury, while Mr. Heathcote, who thought that he was
coming out for a short visit and couldn't possibly live out of England,
is already more than half an American, a successful, practical farmer,
and, it may be added, a happy man. "Heart's Content" has been
renaissanced, papered, tiled, _portièred_, utterly transformed, and is
thought quite a show-place now and much admired; but there are some
persons who liked it better when it was only an old-fashioned Virginian
home, before their mahogany majesties the old furniture, and those
courtly commoners Anne Buller and her brothers, had been swept away with
all the other cumbering antiquities.
Sir Robert is now looking into the military, monastic, and baronial
architecture of the mediæval period on the Continent, and goes next year
to Japan to begin the exhaustive researches which are to culminate in
his next book, the "Lives of the Mikados."
F. C. BAYLOR.
[THE END.]
THE TRUTH ABOUT DOGS.
I am about to do a very unpopular thing,--namely, to write realistically
about the dog and to protest mildly against the extravagant and
sentimental way of writing about him which has become so fashionable and
which threatens to make him a veritable fetich. The intolerance of his
worshippers has already attained a height of dogmatism (the pun is
hardly a conscious one) which is truly theologic. I have been made
aware, when expressing dissent or a low measure of faith, of an
ill-concealed scorn, such as curls the lip of a Boston liberal or lights
the eye of a "Hard-Shell" or a Covenanter when any one ventures to
differ from him.
The theory is gravely advanced of a dog heaven,--not confined to the
poor Indian, whose paradise consists of happy hunting-grounds, where, of
course, he will need his faithful hound to keep him company. The main
argument of white men is generally found to be the superiority of canine
virtue over the human. Whether the word "cynic" originates from a
similar source I will not undertake to say; but I have more than half a
suspicion that such talk proceeds rather from a prejudice against men
than a genuine enthusiasm for dogs. This was doubtless the feeling of
the Frenchman who said, "_Plus je connais l'homme, plus je préfère le
chien._" As to any argument drawn from the need of compensation
elsewhere for privation endured on earth, however it might hold
concerning the ancient dog, there is no foundation for the claim now;
for verily the modern dog hath his portion in this life,--and a double
one, too.
I am impelled by no fanatical zeal, and have no creed or cult of my own
to vindicate. I am influenced only by a noble love of truth and a
sublime sense of duty in arraying myself with the despised
minority,--perhaps I may say by a sense of fair play for the "under
dog." I do not ask the _kynolatrist_ to "call off his dogs" altogether:
I merely ask him to allow those who do not share his enthusiasm to pass
by on the other side without his setting the dogs upon them. I would
recall to the sentimentalist who goes on repeating his stock phrases
and, perhaps, like Mr. Winkle, pretending an enthusiasm which he does
not feel, the wholesome advice of Dr. Johnson, "Sir, free your mind of
cant." Canon Farrar tells of a gentleman who was seated in the
smoking-room of an English hotel when a dog entered. He became violently
agitated, so that a waiter had to bend over and whisper to him, "It's a
real dog." The poor fellow was subject to a form of delirium tremens
which caused him to see imaginary dogs. I fear the disease is epidemic
and is on the increase. I would kindly recall the public mind to the
real dog. At least, I would suggest that the other side be heard; for
those who have had most to say on the subject seem to me to exhibit a
one-sided habit of mind, analogous to the manner of running observable
in their favorites.
It is difficult to trace the origin of this new theology, the apotheosis
of the Dog. It is certainly altogether un-Biblical. The whole tenor of
Scripture is decidedly uncomplimentary to the species. It is even
proclaimed as a new commandment, "Beware of dogs." They are everywhere
presented as the symbol of all that is unclean, noisy, greedy, and
dangerous. The nearest to a compliment I can find is the saying that "a
living dog is better than a dead lion." The only good deed recorded of
them is that of licking the wounds of poor Lazarus. When Hazael would
express in the strongest terms his incapability of the most shocking
conduct, he asks, "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?"
Job seems to have felt that he could say nothing more scathing of
certain persons who derided him than that "their fathers I would have
disdained to set with the dogs of my flock." Instead of a dog heaven, we
are told that one of the bright distinctions and blessed securities of
the New Jerusalem will be that "without are dogs."
Nor would it seem to be a religion of nature. I find little, if any,
more respect shown to the species in mythology,--the nearest to an
apotheosis being the assignment of the janitorship of hell to a dog with
three heads. Egyptian mythology found it convenient to have a dog-headed
man--Anubis--as the attendant of Isis and Osiris. The _cynocephali_
whom the Egyptians venerated were more properly baboons: so that their
dog heaven, one might say, was only such on its face.
Language is the amber which preserves the thought of man. We need not
dig far into the etymological strata to be impressed by the unenviable
place which the dog has made for himself in the tradition and experience
of our race. The name itself, and still more its variations, such as
cur, hound, puppy, and whelp, are anything but complimentary when
applied to mankind; and its derivatives, such as "dogged" and
"doggerel," are not of dignified suggestion. And, mark you, these
associations with the names do not seem to "let go," any more than the
dog itself from his bone.
The dog slipped into literature at a very early date after the Fall, but
slunk about with his tail between his legs, as it were, and was kicked
and cursed with entire unanimity. It is difficult to say just when his
dogship began to stand up on his hind legs in literature. He has little
or no classical standing. The dog of Ulysses is, I believe, a solitary
instance. Shakespeare's "view" comes out in Lear's climacteric
execration of his "dog-hearted daughters." Sir Henry Holland once lost a
bet of a guinea owing to his failure to find a dog kindly spoken of by
Shakespeare. Milton for the most part sublimely passes them by, except
to embellish his "portress at hell's gate" with a canine appendix.
Goethe's aversion to them is well known. Old Dr. Watts is an authority
on moral traits, and the best word he has for them is that "dogs delight
to bark and bite, for 'tis their nature to."
Let it not be supposed that I altogether endorse this apparent
conspiracy of the ages to give the dog a bad name,--always supposing
that he did not himself furnish the bad name to literature. I am not
impervious to advanced thought, and I like to see fair play. When a dog
is down, and everybody is down on him, he ought to be let up. It is no
wonder that a reaction set in, as will always be the case in extremes,
and, as usual, to the opposite extreme. English literature experienced
about the beginning of this century an invasion of shepherd kings, such
as Walter Scott, Christopher North, the Ettrick Shepherd, and the like,
who brought with them a great gust of outdoor air, and with it a
renaissance of the dog. But the great apostle of the new movement was
the late Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, whose famous "Rab and his
Friends" has inoculated the reading public with something which might be
called a species of _rabies_. This charming writer reminds me of certain
gentle inhabitants of the asylum, who have so identified themselves in
imagination with dogs that they greet you with a bark.
We owe a debt of gratitude to these amiable enthusiasts for their
demurrers to the one-sided verdict of history and for their discoveries
of exceptional dogs and of exceptional traits in the canine character.
For are we not bidden, "if there be _any_ virtue, and if there be any
praise," to "think on these things"?
We do think of them, and we are grateful. We do not, to be sure, find
ourselves starting off incontinently to the dog-fancier's in order to
present our wife with a poodle or to transform our quiet premises into a
howling wilderness, but we think better of the world as a place to live
in, and we have a higher sense of the charity and patience of human
nature. Nevertheless, while yielding to none in my tender feeling for
dear Dr. Brown and his gentle fellow-kynophilists, I am not prepared to
obey the new commandment which this new canine gospel inculcates, "Love
me, love my dog."
Probably my personal acquaintance with the species has been unfortunate,
but I have not happened to meet with these superhuman creatures. I once
tried, in my extreme childhood, to make a pet of a Newfoundland pup of
high degree; but the little brute sickened and killed himself one day by
eating a mess of the foulest refuse. In the village where I lived there
was a crabbed little hump-backed tailor, whose house and shop were on a
corner, and with him lived a vicious yellow bull-dog. It was a question
which was the most unpopular and the most obnoxious _bête noire_ with
the villagers. We boys took a fearful delight in stealthily approaching
the little tailor's back door in the evening, and then, with a sudden
shout, taking to our heels around the corner, whereat the yellow fiend
would burst out after us, with "Bunky" close behind.
The only other dog in our village of which I have any recollection was a
great animal, facetiously known as a watch-dog, whose mission it was to
lie in wait behind the house of the man he owned, and, as soon as he
heard a step upon the gravel walk or the tinkle of the door-bell, to
dart out upon the intruder with a howl and a spring. The result was that
one day my father, the most quiet and respectable of men, in attempting
to pay a friendly visit, was set upon, knocked down, throttled, and, but
for timely rescue, would probably have fallen a victim to the habits of
this hospitable mansion. And from that day he left his friends to their
preference of companions. My own experiences of the premises were such
that I followed for once the paternal example, in giving them a wide
berth.
My social footsteps have always been guided by a knowledge of the
kennel, as well as of the house. Even as the pastor of a human flock, I
confess that I have many a time stood at men's gates balancing the
question of duty or safety before I girded up a martyr spirit and
resolved to enter. Not that I loved the sheep and lambs less, but that I
hated their growling, leaping, four-footed favorites more.
It is not a mere question of wisdom or of taste, this prevalence and
idolatry of dogs. If it were only an amiable weakness, and a matter
affecting the person indulging it, some such form of image-worship as
the rage for bric-à-brac and old china, I should not take the trouble to
enter my protest. But hath not a dog teeth? Hath not a dog great, dirty
paws, a venomous and fiery tongue, and a throat which is the organ of
all discords? Hath he not feet which can carry his unpleasantnesses
into other people's presence, perhaps deposit them on your lap, or cause
you to stumble and be offended and made weak by standing in your way? An
ideal dog, a china dog, a dog behind a picture-frame, the dog of
literature, are not without their æsthetic side,--are certainly things
to be let alone. But the realistic, vigorously vital, intrusively
affectionate, or faithfully suspicious dog can no more be "let alone"
than could Mr. Jefferson Davis and his rebellious States once upon a
time, for the simple reason that he will not let us alone. It is as
curious an exhibition of human nature to note the surprise which always
seizes the owner when one of these "faithful" creatures bites any of his
friends and neighbors as is the proverbial incapacity of the householder
to admit the existence of malaria on his premises. A little friend of
mine who can hardly toddle, while visiting with his parents, was
recently sprung upon by a great house-dog and bitten seriously in the
cheek. And the philosophical explanation, which ought to have been
highly satisfactory, was, "The dog dislikes children, but has never been
known to hurt grown people"!
I have alluded to the testimony of Scripture concerning dogs. Herein, at
least, Science is in accord with Revelation. It tells us that there is
nothing in the osteology of this family (_Canidæ_) to distinguish the
domestic dog from the wolf or fox or jackal. His "brain-cavity is
small," his strong point being "his powerful muscles of mastication."
His "sense of taste is dull and coarse." He is "not as cleanly in his
habits as the cat." He is "not courageous in proportion to his
strength." Let me illustrate this last point by what I saw this
afternoon. A dog about as large and strong as a young lion was barking
vigorously behind a low fence at a cat, who sat serenely on the other
side, meeting his Bombastes Furioso plunges at the intervening pickets
with a contemptuous hiss and an occasional buffet with her claw upon his
muzzle. I have yet to see a dog that dares attack my goat of a year
old, except when he is harnessed to his wagon. They are not, however,
afraid of sheep. And they are much more clear in their minds about
attacking children than strong men with clubs. A man is safe before them
in proportion as he is not in fear. They know a coward at once, with all
a coward's instinct.
Another little peculiarity of this family in all its branches is the
hydrophobia, an accomplishment which they are very generous in
imparting, and which is to be taken into account in estimating their
usefulness.
Cuvier, however, puts forward the ingenious claim--worthy of the Buckle
and Taine type of scientific speculators, who are never so happy as when
they think they have accounted for the world without the hypothesis of a
God, and who naturally catch at an opportunity of reading that name
backward (or the name Dog backward, whichever you like)--that "the dog
was necessary to the establishment of human society." This startling
dogma of the new kynolatry is a good illustration of the way in which
this class of theorists persist in putting the cart before the horse.
The truth is that man was necessary to the establishment of canine
society. Except as human skill and patience subdued, trained, and
developed the dog, the latter was incapable of rising, and was one of
man's most dangerous foes,--the fox robbing his hen-roosts and
grape-vines, the wolf eating him and his children, and the jackal and
hyena picking his bones and rifling his grave. The same ridiculous claim
of being the corner-stone of human society has been made by some
wiseacre in behalf of the goat. The plain truth is that only one animal
can justly lay claim to such a distinction. At the threshold of human
society and civilization lies the slimy figure of the snake, who
persuaded man to purchase knowledge at the cost of innocence, a lesson
which has been learned by heart and been worked out in all the "history
of civilization," for verily "the trail of the serpent is over it
still."
Few persons realize the comparative un-worth of the dog. There is even a
hazy notion in most minds that he is to be classed with the horse, the
cow, the sheep, and the gentle swine, that he is entitled to lift up his
voice with the morn-saluting cock, or to roam with the mouse-disturbing
cat, or with that patient pair, the harnessed billy- and the lactiferous
nanny-goat.[A] Hence an enormous revenue is required for his support.
For example, we are told that "the dogs in Iowa eat enough annually to
feed a hundred thousand workmen, and cost the State nine million
dollars, or double the education of all its children." I should like to
know how many of these costly and pampered creatures earn their salt.
They toil not, they spin not, they contribute neither food nor wool nor
"power." There are extreme cases where they have proved serviceable for
defence and special purposes. The Laplanders are forced to make shift
with them in default of better draught-animals. There was a time when
the dogs of St. Bernard were a great convenience to the philanthropic
monks,--who, by the way, never received one-hundredth part of the credit
which has been lavished by the sentimentalists upon their half-automaton
assistants. The slave-hunters have found the race still more serviceable
for their ends. On great moors and lonely mountains and in the
exigencies of frontier-life, the shepherd, the hunter, and the pioneer
have turned them to account.
Far be it from me to disparage their assistance in these exceptional
instances and in others which might be named. The dog, like the bull or
the frogs of Egypt, is good in his place. But it does not follow that we
should have a bull in every door-yard, nor that it was an advantage to
the land of Egypt to be covered with frogs in-doors and out. The notion
that a dog is needful for defence in settled, civilized communities is
on a par with the delusion that a man is safer for carrying a loaded
pistol, more harm being done to honest people, and even to those of them
who resort to fire-arms, than to their enemies. One needs only to
consider the dogs of one's own neighborhood and compare the number of
burglars they have routed with the number of children or innocent
passers-by they have scared or bitten. My experience convinces me that
more houses and hen roosts are robbed where there are dogs than where
there are none. And it is easily explained. People who have a blind
trust in watch-dogs cease to watch for themselves. Moreover, the false
alarms of the dog are so numerous, and his barking so indiscriminating
of the difference between friend and foe, and even between real and
imaginary persons, that his owner soon ceases to take note of them. For
who is going to get up every time the dog barks in the night? The dog
is, of course, one of the conditions to be provided for in the burglar's
plan. But when he has silenced, overpowered, or eluded the watch, he has
turned the defence over to his own side, and proceeds with a special
sense of security.
At all events, I do not find that dogs are chiefly kept by those who
most need to be defended, but rather by the strong and by persons living
in closely-settled neighborhoods. Nor do I find that people affect dogs
at all in the ratio or for the sake of the protection, but for the
amusement which they afford, as something to be taken care of as pets
rather than to take care of them.
The watch-dog is an admirable protection from one's friends. What a
boon he is to the misanthrope! What an isolation reigns about the home,
especially in the evening, where a real savage beast stands guard,
roaming in the shadows or clanking his chain beside the path! The
ingenious Mr. Quilp turned this fact to fine account, as he escorted
Sampson Brass to the door of his counting-house on a dark night:
"Be careful how you go, my dear friend. There's a dog in the lane. He
bit a man last night, and a woman the night before, and last Tuesday he
killed a child; but that was in play. Don't go too near him."
"Which side of the road is he, sir?" asked Brass, in great dismay.
"He lives on the right hand," said Quilp, "but sometimes he hides on the
left, ready for a spring. He's uncertain in that respect. Mind you take
care of yourself. I'll never forgive you if you don't."
An exceedingly social institution, the watch-dog, and a delightful
attraction to one's visitors and would-be callers. A _watch_-dog indeed;
for is he not the one thing to be on the watch for, now that the day of
spring-guns and man-traps is past?
It is all very well for Byron to rhapsodize about "the watch-dog's
honest bark," and to think it "sweet" when it "bays deep-mouthed welcome
as we draw near home;" but when one has got inside of that home and gone
to bed, and wants to sleep off his fatigue, it is not always so sweet to
have some neighbor's watch-dog keeping up a dishonest bark at everything
and nothing half through the night. As to the moral quality of the
noise, the only honest bark is that of the mosquito, who is too sincere
either to attack you without warning or to give a false alarm. I have
thrown my share of boot-jacks and other missiles at the nightly cat, and
with some small measure of success; but what boot-jack will reach the
howling mastiff domiciled several doors off, and whose owner says in
effect, "Boot me, boot my dog," or the converse? And what an "aid to
reflection," which Coleridge never conceived of, is that wretched
little whelp that explodes under my study window at the critical moment
of intellectual inspiration, like a pack of animated fire-crackers! Who
shall pretend to set off the occasional service which the canine voice
has rendered to man against the long and varied agonies which it has
inflicted on our race? Emerson has a fine touch of nature, which will go
to many a heart, when he enumerates among the recollected experiences of
childhood "the fear of dogs." Goethe's aversion to dogs, already alluded
to, seems to have been based chiefly upon their noisiness at night.
Charles Reade had a habit of hitting the nail on the head, and never
showed it more pithily than when he answered "Ouida's" application for a
name for her new pet poodle: "Call it Tonic, for it is sure to be a
mixture of bark, steal, and whine."
As to poodles and pugs, it is difficult for the masculine "man of
letters" to write. Fortunately, no member of my family has thus far
evinced any symptom of the poodle mania, so akin to the singular malady
which reduced poor Titania to the abject adoration of ass-headed Bottom.
Therefore any repugnance (this is purely an _ex post facto_ pun) on my
part cannot be attributed to jealousy. I feel that I cannot be too
thankful not to be numbered among the unhappy husbands indicated by the
following recent incident:
"Hello, old man!" said a gentleman to a friend, "what's that you've got
under your coat?"
"That," was the sad reply, as he brought it forth, "is my wife's little
pug dog."
"What are you going to do with him? Take him somewhere and drown him?"