OF ALL anachronisms and survivals, the love of the dog; is the most
reasonless. Because, some thousands of years ago, when we wore other
skins than our own and sat enthroned upon our haunches, tearing
tangles of tendons from raw bones with our teeth, the dog ministered
purveyorwise to our savage needs, we go on cherishing him to this day,
when his only function is to lie sun-soaken on a door mat and insult
us as we pass in and out, enamored of his fat superfluity. One dog in
a thousand earns his bread--and takes beefsteak; the other nine hundred
and ninety-nine we maintain, by cheating the poor, in the style suitable
to their state.
The trouble with the modern dog is that he is the same old dog. Not an
inch has the rascal advanced along the line of evolution. We have ceased
to squat upon our naked haunches and gnaw raw bones, but this companion
of the childhood of the race, this vestigial remnant of _juventus mundi_
this dismal anachronism, this veteran inharmony of the scheme of
things, the dog, has abated no jot nor tittle of his unthinkable
objection-ableness since the morning stars sang together and he had sat
up all night to deflate a lung at the performance. Possibly he may some
time be improved otherwise than by effacement, but at present he is
still in that early stage of reform that is not incompatible with a
mouthful of reformer.
The dog is a detestable quadruped. He knows more ways to be
unmentionable than can be suppressed in seven languages.
The word "dog" is a term of contempt the world over. Poets have sung and
prosaists have prosed of the virtues of individual dogs, but nobody
has had the hardihood to eulogize the species. No man loves the Dog; he
loves his own dog or dogs, and there he stops; the force of perverted
affection can no further go. He loves his own dog partly because that
thrifty creature, ever cadging when not maurauding, tickles his vanity
by fawning upon him as the visible source of steaks and bones; and
partly because the graceless beast insults everybody else, harming as
many as he dares. The dog is an encampment of fleas, and a reservoir of
sinful smells. He is prone to bad manners as the sparks fly upward. He
has no discrimination; his loyalty is given to the person that feeds
him, be the same a blackguard or a murderer's mother. He fights for his
master without regard to the justice of the quarrel--wherein he is no
better than a patriot or a paid soldier. There are men who are proud of
a dog's love--and dogs love that kind of men. There are men who, having
the privilege of loving women, insult them by loving dogs; and there are
women who forgive and respect their canine rivals. Women, I am told, are
true cynolaters; they adore not only dogs, but Dog--not only their
own horrible little beasts, but those of others. But women will love
anything; they love men who love dogs. I sometimes wonder how it is that
of all our women among whom the dog fad is prevalent none have incurred
the husband fad, or the child fad. Possibly there are exceptions, but
it seems to be a rule that the female heart which has a dog in it
is without other lodgers. There is not, I suppose, a very wild and
importunate demand for accommodation. For my part, I do not know which
is the less desirable, the tenant or the tenement There are dogs that
submit to be kissed by women base enough to kiss them; but they have a
secret, coarse revenge. For the dog is a joker, withal, gifted with as
much humor as is consistent with biting.
Miss Louise Imogen Guiney has replied to Mrs. Meynell's proposal to
abolish the dog--a proposal which Miss Guiney has the originality to
call "original." Divested of its "literature," Miss Guiney's plea for
the defendant consists, essentially, of the following assertions: (1)
Dogs are whatever their masters are. (2) They bite only those who fear
them. (3) Really vicious dogs are not found nearer than Constantinople.
(4) Only wronged dogs go mad, and hydrophobia is retaliation. (5) In
actions for damages for dog-bites judicial prejudice is against the dog.
(6) "Dogs are continually saving children from death." (7) Association
with dogs begets piety, tenderness, mercy, loyalty, and so forth; in
brief, the dog is an elevating influence: "to walk modestly at a dog's
heels is a certificate of merit!" As to that last, if Miss Guiney had
ever observed the dog himself walking modestly at the heels of another
dog she would perhaps have wished that it was not the custom of her sex
to seal the certificate of merit with a kiss.
In all this absurd woman's statements, thus fairly epitomized, there
is not one that is true--not one of which the essential falsity is not
evident, obvious, conspicuous to even the most delinquent observation.
Yet with the smartness and smirk of a graduating seminary girl refuting
Epicurus she marshals them against the awful truth that every year in
Europe and the United States alone more than five thousand human beings
the of hydrophobia--a fact which her controversial conscience does not
permit her to mention. The names on this needless death-roll are mostly
those of children, the sins of whose parents in cherishing their own
hereditary love of dogs is visited upon their children because they have
not the intelligence and agility to get out of the way. Or perhaps they
lack that tranquil courage upon which Miss Guiney relies to avert the
canine tooth from her own inedible shank.
Finally this amusing illogician, this type and example of the female
controversialist, has the hardihood to hope that there may be fathers
who can see their children the the horrible death of hydrophobia without
wishing "to exile man's best ideal of fidelity from the hearthstones of
civilization." If we must have an "ideal of fidelity" why not find it,
not in the dog that kills the child, but in the father that kills the
dog. The profit of maintaining a standard and pattern of the virtues (at
considerable expense in the case of this insatiable canine consumer) may
be great, but are we so hard pushed that we must go to the animals for
it? In life and letters are there no men and women whose names kindle
enthusiasm and emulation? Is fidelity, is devotion, is self-sacrifice
unknown among ourselves? As a model of the higher virtues why will not
one's mother serve at a pinch? And what is the matter with Miss Guiney
herself? She is faithful, at least to dogs, whatever she may be to
the hundreds of American children inevitably foredoomed to a death of
unthinkable agony.
There is perhaps a hope that when the sun's returning flame shall gild
the hither end of the thirtieth century this savage and filthy brute,
the dog, will have ceased to "banquet on through a whole year" of human
fat and lean; that he will have been gathered to his variously unworthy
fathers to give an account of the deeds done in body of man. In the
meantime, those of us who have not the enlightened understanding to be
enamored of him may endure with such fortitude as we can command
his feats of tooth among the shins and throats of those who have; we
ourselves are so few that there is a strong numerical presumption of
personal immunity.
It is well to have a clear understanding of such inconveniences as
may be expected to ensue from dog-bites. That inconveniences and even
discomforts do sometimes flow from, or at least follow, the mischance of
being bitten by dogs, even the sturdiest champion of "man's best friend"
will admit when not heated fay controversy. True, he is disposed to
sympathy for those incurring the inconveniences and discomforts, but
against apparent incompassion may be offset his indubitable sympathy
with the dog. No one is altogether heartless.
Amongst the several disadvantages of a close personal connection with
the canine tooth, the disorder known as hydrophobia has long held an
undisputed primacy. The existence of dus ailment is attested by so many
witnesses, many of whom, belonging to the profession of medicine, speak
with a certain authority, that even the breeders and lovers of snap-dogs
are compelled reluctantly to concede it, though as a rule they stoutly
deny that it is imparted by the dog. In their view, hydrophobia is a
theory, not a condition. The patient imagines himself to have it, and
acting upon that unsupported assumption or hypothesis, suffers and dies
in the attempt to square his conduct with his opinions.
It seems there is firmer ground for their view of the matter than the
rest of us have been willing to admit There is such a thing, doubtless,
as hydrophobia proper, but also there is such another thing as
pseudo-hydrophobia, or hydrophobia improper.
Pseudo-hydrophobia, the physicians explain, is caused by fear of
hydrophobia. The patient, having been chewed by a healthy and harmless
dog, broods upon his imaginary peril, solicitously watches his imaginary
symptoms, and, finally, persuading himself of their reality, puts them
on exhibition, as he understands them. He runs about (when permitted) on
his hands and knees, growls, barks, howls, and in default of a tail wags
the part of him where it would be if he had one. In a few days he is
gone before, a victim to his lack of confidence in man's best friend.
The number of cases of pseudo-hydrophobia, relatively, to those of true
hydrophobia, is not definitely known, the medical records having been
imperfectly made, and never collated; champions of the snap-dog, as
intimated, believe it is many to nothing. That being so (they argue),
the animal is entirely exonerated, and leaves the discussion without a
stain upon his reputation.
But that is feeble reasoning. Even if we grant their premises we can not
embrace their conclusion. In the first place, it hurts to be bitten by
a dog, as the dog himself audibly confesses when bitten by another
dog. Furthermore, pseudo-hydrophobia is quite as fatal as if it were a
legitimate product of the bite, not a result of the terror which that
mischance inspires.
Human nature being what it is, and well known to the dog to be what it
is, we have a right to expect that the creature will take our weaknesses
into consideration--that he will respect our addiction to reasonless
panic, even as we respect his when, as we commonly do, we refrain from
attaching tinware to his tail. A dog that runs himself to death to evade
a kitchen utensil which could not possibly harm him, and which if he did
not flee would not pursue, is the author of his own undoing in precisely
the same sense as is the victim of pseudo-hydrophobia. He is slain by
a theory, not a condition. Yet the wicked boy that set him going is
not blameless, and no one would be so zealous and strenuous in his
prosecution as the cynolater, the adorer of dogs, the person who holds
them guileless of pseudo-hydrophobia.
Mr. Nicholas Smith, while United States Consul at Liege, wrote, or
caused to be written, an official report, wickedly, willfully and
maliciously designed to abridge the privileges, augment the ills and
impair the honorable status of the domestic dog. In the very beginning
of this report Mr. Smith manifests his animus by stigmatizing
the domestic dog as an "hereditary loafer;" and having hurled the
allegation, affirms "the dawn of a [Belgian] new era" wherein the
pampered menial will loaf no more. There is to be no more sun-soaking on
door mats having a southern exposure, no more usurpation of the warmest
segment of the family circle, no more successful personal solicitation
of cheer at the domestic board. The dog's place in the social scale is
no longer to be determined by consideration of sentiment, but will be
the result of cold commercial calculation, and so fixed as best to serve
the ends of industrial expediency. All this in Belgium, where the dog
is already in active service as a beast of burden and draught; doubtless
the transition to that humble condition from his present and
immemorial social elevation in less advanced countries will be slow and
characterized by bitter factional strife. America, especially, though
ever accessible to the infection of new and profitable ideas, will
be angularly slow to accept so radical a subversion of a social
superstructure that almost may be said to rest upon the domestic dog as
a basic verity.
The dogs are our only true "leisure class" (for even the tramps are
sometimes compelled to engage in such simple industries as are possible
within the "precincts" of the county jail) and we are justly proud of
them. They toil not, neither spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not
a dog. Instead of making them hewers of wood and drawers of water, it
would be more consonant with the Anglomaniacal and general Old World
spirit, now so dominant in the councils of the nation, to make them
"hereditary legislators." And Mr. Smith must permit me to add, with a
special significance, that history records an instance of even a horse
making a fairly good Consul.
Mr. Smith avers with obvious and impudent satisfaction that in Liege
twice as many draught dogs as horses are seen in the streets, attached
to vehicles. He regards "a gaily painted cart" drawn by "a well fed
dog" and driven by a well fed (and gaily painted) woman as a "pleasing
vision." I do not; I should prefer to see the dog sitting at the receipt
of steaks and chops and the lady devoting herself to the amelioration of
the condition of the universe, and the manufacture of poetry and stories
that are not true. A more pleasing vision, too, one endeared to eye and
heart by immemorial use and wont, is that of stranger and dog indulging
in the pleasures of the chase--stranger a little ahead--while the woman
in the case manifests a characteristically compassionate solicitude lest
the gentleman's trousers do not match Fido's mustache. It is, indeed,
impossible to regard with any degree of approval the degradation to
commercial utility of two so noble animals as Dog and Woman; and if Man
had joined them together by driving-reins I should hope that God would
put them asunder, even if the reins were held by Dog. There would
no doubt be a distinct gain as well as a certain artistic fitness in
unyoking the strong-minded female of our species from the Chariot of
Progress and yoking her to the apple-cart or fish-wagon, and--but that
is another story; the imminence of the draughtwoman is not foreshadowed
in the report of our Consul at Liege.
Mr. Smith's estimate of the number of dogs in this country at 7,000,000
is a "conservative" one, it must be confessed, and can hardly have been
based on observations by moonlight in a suburban village; his estimate
of the effective strength of the average dog at 500 pounds is probably
about right, as will be attested by any intelligent boy who in campaigns
against orchards has experienced detention by the Cerberi of the places.
Taking his own figures Mr. Smith calculates that we have in this country
3,500,000,000 pounds of "idle dog power." But this statement is more
ingenious than ingenuous; it gives, as doubtless it was intended to
give, the impression that we have only idle dogs, whereas of all mundane
forces the domestic dog is most easily stirred to action. His expense
of energy in pursuit of the harmless, necessary flea, for example, is
prodigious; and he is not infrequently seen in chase of his own tail,
with an activity scarcely inferior. If there is anything worth while
in accepted theories of the conversion and conservation of force these
gigantic energies are by no means wasted; they appear as heat, light
and electricity, modifying climate, reducing gas bills and assisting
in propulsion of street cars. Even in baying the moon and insulting
visitors and bypassers the dog releases a certain amount of vibratory
force which through various mutations of its wave-length, may do its
part in cooking a steak or gratifying the olfactory nerve by throwing
fresh perfume on the violet. Evidently the commercial advantages of
deposing the dog from the position of Exalted Personage and subduing him
to that of Motor would not be all clear gain. He would no longer have
the spirit to send, Whitmanwise, his barbarous but beneficent yawp over
the housetops, nor the leisure to throw off vast quantities of energy
by centrifugal efforts at the conquest of his tail. As to the fleas, he
would accept them with apathetic satisfaction as preventives of thought
upon his fallen fortunes.
Having observed with attention and considered with seriousness the
London _Daily News_ declares its conviction that the dog, as we have the
happiness to know him, is dreadfully bored by civilization. This is one
of the gravest accusations that the friends of progress and light have
been called out to meet--a challenge that it is impossible to ignore and
unprofitable to evade; for the dog as we have the happiness to know him
is the only dog that we have the happiness really to know. The wolf is
hardly a dog within the meaning of the law, nor is the scalp-yielding
coyote, whether he howls or merely sings and plays the piano; moreover,
these are beyond the pale of civilization and outside the scope of our
sympathies.
With the dog it is different His place is among us; he is with us and of
us--a part of our life and love. If we are maintaining and promoting a
condition of things that gives him "that tired feeling" it is befitting
that we mend our ways lest, shaking the carpet dust from his feet and
the tenderloin steaks from his teeth, he depart from our midst and
connect himself with the enchanted life of the thrilling barbarian. We
can not afford to lose him. The cynophobes may call him a "survival" and
sneer at his exhausted mandate--albeit, as Darwin points out, they are
indebted for their sneer to his own habit of uncovering his teeth to
bite; they may seek to cast opprobrium upon the nature of our affection
for him by pronouncing it hereditary--a bequest from our primitive
ancestors, for whom he performed important service in other ways than
depriving visitors of their tendons; but quite the same we should miss
him at his meal time and in the (but for him) silent watches of the
night. We should miss his bark and his bite, the feel of his forefeet
upon our shirt-fronts, the frou-frou of his dusty sides against our
nether habiliments. More than all, we should miss and mourn that visible
yearning for chops and steaks, which he has persuaded us to accept as
the lovelight of his eye and a tribute to our personal worth. We must
keep the dog, and to that end find means to abate his weariness of us
and our ways.
Doubtless much might be done to reclaim our dogs from their uncheerful
state of mind by abstention from debate on imperialism; by excluding
them from the churches, at least during the sermons; by keeping them
off the streets and out of hearing when rites of prostration are in
performance before visiting notables; by forbidding anyone to read aloud
in their hearing the sensational articles in the newspapers, and by
educating them to the belief that Labor and Capital are illusions. A
limitation of the annual output of popular novels would undoubtedly
reduce the dejection, which could be still further mitigated by
abolition of the more successful magazines. If the dialect story or poem
could be prohibited, under severe penalties, the sum of night-howling
(erroneously attributed to lunar influence) would experience an audible
decrement, which, also, would enable the fire department to augment its
own uproar without reproach. There is, indeed, a considerable number of
ways in which we might effect a double reform--promoting the advantage
of Man, as well as medicating the mental fatigue of Dog. For another
example, it would be "a boon and a blessing to man" if Society would put
to death, or at least banish, the mill-man or manufacturer who persists
in apprising the entire community many times a day by means of a steam
whistle that it is time for his oppressed employees (every one of whom
has a gold watch) to go to work or to leave off. Such things not only
make a dog tired, they make a man mad. They answer with an accented
affirmative Truthful James' plaintive inquiry,
"Is civilization a failure,
Or is the Caucasian played out?"
Unquestionably, from his advantageous point of view as a looker-on at
the game, the dog is justified in the conviction that they are.