"Thou know'st whate'er I see, read, learn,
Related to thy species, friend,
I tell thee, hoping it may turn
To thine advantage--so attend."
--Caroline Bowles Southey's _Conte a Mon Chien_.
In pursuance of this curriculum, while Joy-of-Life sat on the floor
beside Sigurd for a good-night brush of his gleaming coat, I would read
to them from any canine classic that chanced to be at hand,--_Rab and
His Friends_, _Bobby of Greyfriars_, _My Dogs of the Northland_, _The
Call of the Wild_, _Bob_, _Son of Battle_, John Muir's vivid story of
his Stickeen, Maeterlinck's brooding biography of his Pelleas with the
bulging forehead of Socrates, or De Amicis' touching account of his
blessed mongrel, Dick. When Sigurd grew restless under his toilet and
wanted to jump up and play, we would tell him how the great dog Kitmer,
the only animal besides Balaam's ass and the camel that carried Mahomet
on his flight from Mecca to be admitted into the Moslem paradise, had
"stretched forth his forelegs" for three hundred years in the mouth of
a cave, mounting guard over the Seven Sleepers.
Joy-of-Life, who was an historian as well as an economist and had
written, despite the annoyance of being confined to the same set of
dates and dynasties, three histories of England, would reach down from
her book shelves some high authority and read us, perhaps, Plutarch's
report of the watchdog, Cipparus, who guarded the temple of AEsculapius
at Athens so well that when a thief slipped off with some of the
precious offerings, he went after in unrelenting pursuit. "First, the
man pelted him with stones, but Cipparus would not give up. When day
came, he kept at a little distance, but followed with his eye on the
man and, when the fellow threw him food, would not touch it. When the
man lay down, he spent the night by him; when he walked again, the dog
got up and kept following. Cipparus fawned on any wayfarers he met, but
kept barking at the thief. When the authorities, who were in chase,
heard of this from people who had met the pair and who described the
color and size of the dog, they pursued with yet more zeal, seized the
man and brought him back from Crommyon. The dog turned round and led
the way, proud and delighted, evidently claiming that _he_ had caught
the temple thief."
Another evening it would be Motley's account of the escape of the
Prince of Orange from a night raid sent out by the Duke of Alva, when
the Prince was encamped near Mons. "The sentinels were cut down, the
whole army surprised, and for a moment powerless, while, for two hours
long, from one o'clock in the morning until three, the Spaniards
butchered their foes, hardly aroused from their sleep, ignorant by how
small a force they had been thus suddenly surprised, and unable in the
confusion to distinguish between friend and foe. The boldest, led by
Julian in person, made at once for the Prince's tent. His guards and
himself were in profound sleep, but a small spaniel, who always passed
the night upon his bed, was a more faithful sentinel. The creature
sprang forward, barking furiously at the sound of hostile footsteps,
and scratching his master's face with his paws. There was but just time
for the Prince to mount a horse which was ready saddled, and to effect
his escape through the darkness, before his enemies sprang into the
tent. His servants were cut down, his master of the horse and two of
his secretaries, who gained their saddles a moment later, all lost
their lives, and but for the little dog's watchfulness, William of
Orange, upon whose shoulders the whole weight of his country's fortunes
depended, would have been led within a week to an ignominious death. To
his dying day, the Prince ever afterwards kept a spaniel of the same
race in his bed-chamber."
And well he might, and well, too, did the sculptors place a little dog
of marble or bronze at the feet of his royal statues hardly more silent
than himself, but what Sigurd and I clamored to know was whether, on
that wild night of September eleventh, 1572, the spaniel escaped with
his master or died with the servants and secretaries on Spanish steel,
and no historian, not even our own, could tell us. With the ancient
guile of teachers she would divert our attention from the question she
could not answer by relating something else,--how Denmark commemorates
a dog true to a deposed king in a high order of nobility whose motto
runs, _Wild-brat was faithful_. Or she would take down the first volume
of her well-worn _Heimskringla_ and excite Sigurd's young ambition by
the record of King Saur. For when Eyestein, King of the Uplands, had
harried Thrandheim and set his son over them, and they had slain the
son, then "King Eyestein fared a-warring the second time into
Thrandheim, and harried wide there, and laid folk under him. Then he
bade the Thrandheimers choose whether they would have for king his
thrall, who was called Thorir Faxi, or his hound, who was called Saur;
and they chose the second, deeming they would then the rather do their
own will. Then let they bewitch into the hound the wisdom of three men,
and he barked two words and spake the third. A collar was wrought for
him, and chains of gold and silver; and whenso the ways were miry, his
courtmen bare him on their shoulders. A high-seat was dight for him,
and he sat on howe as kings do; he dwelt at the Inner Isle, and had his
abode at the stead called Saur's Howe. And so say folk that he came to
his death in this wise, that the wolves fell on his flocks and herds,
and his courtmen egged him on to defend his sheep; so he leaped down
from his howe, and went to meet the wolves, but they straightway tore
him asunder."
On the whole, Sigurd preferred poetry, whose rhythm promptly put him to
sleep. It was all one to him whether Homer sang the joy-broken heart of
old Argus, over whom
"the black night of death
Came suddenly, as soon as he had seen
Ulysses, absent now for twenty years,"
or Virgil chanted the device whereby AEneas and the Sibyl baffled the
giant watch-dog of Hades.
"The three-mouthed bark of Cerberus here filleth all the place,
As huge he lieth in a den that hath them full in face;
But when the adders she beheld upon his crest up-borne,
A sleepy morsel honey-steeped and blent of wizard's corn,
She cast him: then his three-fold throat, all wild with hunger's lack,
He opened wide, and caught at it, and sank his monstrous back,
And there he lay upon the earth enormous through the cave."
Sigurd would softly thump his tail in cadence with the melancholy beat
of a dog elegy, whether Prior's tribute to the virtues of Queen Mary's
True, or Gay's ironic consolation to Celia on the death of her lap-dog
Shock, Cowper's impartial epitaphs for My Lord's pointer Neptune and My
Lady's spaniel Fop, Lehmann's memorial of his retriever, who
"Chose, since official dogs at times unbend,
The household cat for confidante and friend,"