Ever since I bit a circus lion, believing him to be another dog
like myself, only larger, I have been what Doc Watson calls a Public
Character in our town.
Freckles, my boy, was a kind of a public character, too. He went around
bragging about my noble blood and bravery, and all the other boys and
dogs in town sort of looked up to him and thought how lucky he was to
belong to a dog like me. And he deserved whatever glory he got of it,
Freckles did. For, if I do say it myself, there's not a dog in town got
a better boy than my boy Freckles, take him all in all. I'll back him
against any dog's boy that is anywhere near his size, for fighting,
swimming, climbing, foot-racing, or throwing stones farthest and
straightest. Or I'll back him against any stray boy, either.
Well, some dogs may be born Public Characters, and like it. And some may
be brought up to like it. I've seen dogs in those travelling Uncle Tom's
Cabin shows that were so stuck on themselves they wouldn't hardly notice
us town dogs. But with me, becoming a Public Character happened all in
a flash, and it was sort of hard for me to get used to it. One day I was
just a private kind of a dog, as you might say, eating my meals at the
Watson's back door, and pretending to hunt rats when requested, and not
scratching off too many fleas in Doc Watson's drug store, and standing
out from underfoot when told, and other unremarkable things like that.
And the next day I had bit that lion and was a Public Character, and
fame came so sudden I scarcely knew how to act.
Even drummers from big places like St. Louis and Chicago would come into
the drug store and look at my teeth and toe nails, as if they must be
different from other dogs' teeth and toe nails. And people would come
tooting up to the store in their little cars, and get out and look me
over and say:
“Well, Doc, what'll you take for him?” and Doc would wink, and say:
“He's Harold's dog. You ask Harold.”
Which Harold is Freckles's other name. But any boy that calls him Harold
outside of the schoolhouse has got a fight on his hands, if that boy is
anywhere near Freckles's size. Harry goes, or Hal goes, but Harold is
a fighting word with Freckles. Except, of course, with grown people. I
heard him say one day to Tom Mulligan, his parents thought Harold was a
name, or he guessed they wouldn't have given it to him; but it wasn't a
name, it was a handicap.
Freckles would always say, “Spot ain't for sale.” And even Heinie
Hassenyager, the butcher, got stuck on me after I got to be a Public
Character. Heinie would come two blocks up Main Street with lumps of
Hamburg steak, which is the kind someone has already chewed for you, and
give them to me. Steak, mind you, not old gristly scraps. And before I
became a Public Character Heinie even grudged me the bones I would drag
out of the box under his counter when he wasn't looking.
My daily hope was that I could live up to it all. I had always tried,
before I happened to bite that lion, to be a friendly kind of a dog
toward boys and humans and dogs, all three. I'd always been expected to
do a certain amount of tail-wagging and be friendly. But as soon as I
got to be a Public Character, I saw right away I wasn't expected to be
_too_ friendly any more. So, every now and then, I'd growl a little,
for no reason at all. A dog that has bit a lion is naturally expected to
have fierce thoughts inside of him; I could see that. And you have got
to act the way humans expect you to act, if you want to slide along
through the world without too much trouble.
So when Heinie would bring me the ready-chewed steak I'd growl at him a
little bit. And then I'd bolt and gobble the steak like I didn't think
so derned much of it, after all, and was doing Heinie a big personal
favour to eat it. And now and then I'd pretend I wasn't going to eat a
piece of it unless it was chewed finer for me, and growl at him about
that.
That way of acting made a big hit with Heinie, too. I could see that he
was honoured and flattered because I didn't go any further than just a
growl. It gave him a chance to say he knew how to manage animals. And
the more I growled, the more steak he brought. Everybody in town fed
me. I pretty near ate myself to death for a while there, besides all the
meat I buried back of Doc Watson's store to dig up later.
But my natural disposition is to be friendly. I would rather be loved
than feared, which is what Bill Patterson, the village drunkard, used
to say. When they put him into the calaboose every Saturday afternoon
he used to look out between the bars on the back window and talk to the
boys and dogs that had gathered round and say that he thanked them
one and all for coming to an outcast's dungeon as a testimonial of
affection, and he would rather be loved than feared. And my natural
feelings are the same. I had to growl and keep dignified and go on being
a Public Character, but often I would say to myself that it was losing
me all my real friends, too.
The worst of it was that people, after a week or so, began to expect
me to pull something else remarkable. Freckles, he got up a circus, and
charged pins and marbles, and cents when he found any one that had any,
to get into it, and I was the principal part of that circus. I was in a
cage, and the sign over me read: