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Title: My Literary Zoo
Author: Sanborn, Kate
Language: English
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MY LITERARY ZOO
KATE SANBORN’S BOOKS.
=Abandoning an Adopted Farm.= 12mo. Cloth, 75 cents.
“Every page is rich with its amusing and entertaining stories and
references.”—_Boston Herald._
“Can not fail to be of the utmost interest to any and all who have spent
any time in the country and observed the ways of country people. Miss
Sanborn is simply inimitable in her ability to catch the humorous in
what is passing about her, and in setting it down so that others can
enjoy it.”—_Cleveland World._
=Adopting an Abandoned Farm.= 16mo. Boards, 50 cents.
“‘Adopting an Abandoned Farm’ has as much laugh to the square inch as
any book we have read this many a day.”—_Boston Sunday Herald._
“Miss Kate Sanborn has made a name and place for herself beside the
immortal Sam Slick, and has made Gooseville, Connecticut, as illustrious
as Slickville in Onion County, of the same State.”—_The Critic._
“If any one wants an hour’s entertainment for a warm sunny day on the
piazza, or a cold wet day by a log fire, this is the book that will
furnish it.”—_New York Observer._
=A Truthful Woman in Southern California.= 12mo. Cloth, 75 cents.
“Miss Sanborn is certainly a very bright writer, and when a book bears
her name it is safe to buy it and put it aside for delectation when a
leisure hour comes along. This bit of a volume is enticing in every
page, and the weather seemed not to be so intolerably hot while we were
reading it.”—_New York Herald._
“Her descriptions are inimitable, and their brilliancy is enhanced with
quaint and witty observations and brief historical allusions....
Valuable information and richly entertaining descriptions are admirably
blended in this book.”—_Boston Home Journal._
New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.
My Literary Zoo
[Illustration]
By
Kate Sanborn
Author of Adopting an Abandoned Farm, Abandoning an Adopted Farm, A
Truthful Woman in Southern California, Etc.
[Illustration]
New York
D. Appleton and Company
1896
COPYRIGHT, 1896,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
PAGE
EVERYBODY’S PETS 1
DEVOTED TO DOGS 19
CATS 75
ALL SORTS 105
MY LITERARY ZOO.
EVERYBODY’S PETS.
The world’s not seen him yet,
Who has not loved a pet.
Not the human pets of noted persons, such as Walter Scott’s Pet
Marjorie, that winsome, precocious little witch, so loved by the “Wizard
of the North,” or Bettina von Arnim, the eccentric, brilliant girl,
whose rhapsodic idolatry was placidly encouraged by the great Goethe,
but the dumb favourites of distinguished men and women.
I must devote a few pages to the various tributes to insects, birds, and
animals, written about with love, pity, or admiration, yet not as pets,
as Burns’s address to the Mousie:
I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
And justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor earth-born companion
And fellow-mortal;
and another to an unspeakable insect that rhymes with mouse. We
remember, too, his essay on Inhuman Man, as he saw a wounded hare limp
by. The fly has often been honoured in prose or verse, but we all like
best the benevolent speech of dear Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy to the
overgrown bluebottle, which had buzzed about his nose and tormented him
cruelly during dinner, and which, after infinite attempts, he had caught
at last. “I’ll not hurt thee,” said Uncle Toby; “I’ll not hurt a hair of
thy head. Go,” said he, lifting up the window—“go, poor devil, get thee
gone. Why should I hurt thee? This world surely is wide enough to hold
both thee and me.”
Tristram adds, “The lesson then imprinted has never since been an hour
out of mind, and I often think that I owe one half of my philanthropy to
that one accidental impression.”
The Greek grasshopper must have been a wonderful creature, a sacred
object, and spoken of as a charming songster. When Socrates and Phædrus
came to the fountain shaded by the palm tree, where they had their
famous discourse, Socrates spoke of “the choir of grasshoppers.”
Another makes the insect say to a rustic who had captured him:
Me, the Nymphs’ wayside minstrel, whose sweet note
O’er sultry hill is heard, and shady grove to float.
Still another sings how a grasshopper took the place of a broken string
on his lyre and “filled the cadence due.”
This Pindaric grasshopper seems quite unlike the ravaging locust of the
West. Burroughs suggests that he should be brought to our country, as
some one is trying to introduce the English lark.
Emerson devotes a poem to the burly dozing bumblebee, a genuine
optimist:
Wiser far than human seer,
Yellow-breeched philosopher;
Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet.
A delightful volume could be compiled on the literature of bird life,
from the cuckoo, the earliest songster honoured by the poets, to Matthew
Arnold’s canary. Passing on to animals, the Lake poets were interested
to a noticeable degree in these humble companions. In Peter Bell, a poem
that proved Wordsworth’s theories about poetry to be untenable, the ass
is the hero, a veritable preacher, as in the days of Balaam. And
Coleridge, greatly to the amusement of his critics, addressed some lines
To a Young Ass, its Mother being tethered near it:
How askingly its footsteps hither tend!
It seems to say, And have I then one friend?
Innocent foal! thou poor despised forlorn!
I hail thee brother, spite of the fool’s scorn!
And fain would take thee with me, in the dell
Of peace and mild equality to dwell.
Where Toil shall call the charmer Health his bride,
And Laughter tickle Plenty’s ribless side!
How thou wouldst toss thy heels in gamesome play,
And frisk about as lamb or kitten gay!
Yea! and more musically sweet to me
Thy dissonant harsh bray of joy would be,
Than warbled melodies that soothe to rest
The aching of pale fashion’s vacant breast.
Wordsworth also wrote on The White Doe of Rylstone and The Pet Lamb.
Southey paid his respects to The Pig and a Dancing Bear:
Alas, poor Bruin! How he foots the pole,
And waddles round it with unwieldy steps
Swaying from side to side. The dancing master
Hath had as profitless a pupil in him
As when he tortured my poor toes
To minuet grace, and made them move like clock-work
In musical obedience.
After sympathizing with his “piteous plight” he draws a moral for the
advocates of the slave trade.
He also addressed poems to The Bee and A Spider; the latter must be
given entire, it is so strong and original in its comparisons:
Spider! thou needst not run in fear about
To shun my curious eyes;
I won’t humanely crush thy bowels out
Lest thou should eat the flies;
Nor will I roast thee with a damned delight,
Thy strange instinctive fortitude to see,
For there is One who might
One day roast me.
Weaver of snares, thou emblemest the ways
Of Satan, sire of lies;
Hell’s huge black spider, for mankind he lays
His toils, as thou for flies.
When Betty’s busy eye runs round the room,
Woe to that nice geometry, if seen!
But where is he whose broom
The earth shall clean?
Thou busy labourer! one resemblance more
May yet the verse prolong,
For, spider, thou art like the poet poor,
Whom thou hast helped in song.
Both busily our needful food to win
We work as Nature taught, with ceaseless pains,
Thy bowels thou dost spin,
I spin my brains.
You remember that the pertinacity with which a spider renewed his
exertions after failing six times to fix his net, roused Bruce to
perseverance and success.
Cackling geese saved Rome, and Caligula shod his favourite horse with
gold and nominated him for vice consul, as he considered him vastly
superior to the men who aspired to that honourable position. Virgil
amused his leisure hours with a gnat. Homer made pets of frogs and mice.
The horse has been dearly loved by many famous people who have not been
ashamed to own it.
Mr. Everett once told a pathetic anecdote of Edmund Burke, that “in the
decline of his life, when living in retirement on his farm at
Beaconsfield, the rumour went up to London that he had gone mad and went
round his park kissing his cows and horses. His only son had died not
long before, leaving a petted horse which had been turned into the park
and treated as a privileged favourite. Mr. Burke in his morning walks
would often stop to caress the favourite animal. On one occasion the
horse recognised Mr. Burke from a distance, and coming nearer and
nearer, eyed him with the most pleading look of recognition, and said as
plainly as words could have said, ‘I have lost him too!’ and then the
poor dumb beast deliberately laid his head upon Mr. Burke’s bosom.
Overwhelmed by the tenderness of the animal, expressed in the mute
eloquence of holy Nature’s universal language, the illustrious statesman
for a moment lost his self-possession and clasping his arms around his
son’s favourite animal, lifted up that voice which had caused the arches
of Westminster Hall to echo the noblest strains that sounded within
them, and wept aloud. Burke is gone; but, sir, so hold me Heaven, if I
were called upon to designate the event or the period in Burke’s life
that would best sustain a charge of insanity, it would not be when, in a
gush of the holiest and purest feeling that ever stirred the human
heart, he wept aloud on the neck of a dead son’s favourite horse.”
Lord Erskine composed some lines to the memory of a beloved pony, Jack,
who had carried him on the home circuit when he was first called to the
bar, and could not afford any more sumptuous mode of travelling:
Poor Jack! thy master’s friend when he was poor,
Whose heart was faithful and whose step was sure!
Should prosperous life debauch my erring heart,
And whispering pride repel the patriot’s part;
Should my foot falter at ambition’s shrine
And for mean lucre quit the path divine,
Then may I think of thee—when I was poor—
Whose heart was faithful and whose step was sure.
The following address of an Arab to his horse is translated from the
Arabic by Bayard Taylor:
Come, my beauty! come, my desert darling!
On my shoulder lay thy glossy head.
Fear not, though the barley sack be empty,
Here’s the half of Hassan’s scanty bread.
Bend thy forehead now to take my kisses,
Lift in love thy dark and splendid eye.
Thou art glad when Hassan mounts the saddle,
Thou art proud he owns thee; so am I.
We have seen Damascus, O my beauty!
And the splendour of the pashas there;
What’s their pomp and riches? Why, I would not
Take them for a handful of thy hair!
Thou shalt have thy share of dates, my beauty,
And thou know’st my water skin is free.
Drink, and welcome; for the springs are distant,
And my strength and safety are in thee.
Bayard Taylor loved and appreciated animals, and in an article in the
Atlantic Monthly of February, 1877, on Studies of Animal Nature, he
says: “If Darwin’s theory should be true, it will not degrade man; it
will simply raise the whole animal world into dignity, leaving man as
far in advance as he is at present.”
He adds: “I have always had a great respect for animals, and have
endeavoured to treat them with the consideration which I think they
deserve. They have quick perceptions, and know when to be confiding or
reticent. I have learned no better way to gain their confidence than to
ask myself, If I were such or such an animal, how should I wish to be
treated by man? and to act upon that suggestion. Since the key to the
separate languages has been lost on both sides, the higher intelligence
must condescend to open some means of communication with the lower.
“The zoölogists unfortunately rarely trouble themselves to do this; they
are more interested in the skull of an elephant, the thigh-bone of a
bird, or the dorsal fin of a fish, than in the intelligence or
rudimentary moral sense of the creature. But the former field is open to
all laymen, and nothing but a stubborn traditional contempt for our
slaves or our hunted enemies in the animal world has held us back from a
truer knowledge of them.
“In the first place, animals have much more capacity to understand human
speech than is generally supposed. Some years ago, seeing the
hippopotamus in Barnum’s Museum looking very stolid and dejected, I
spoke to him in English, but he did not even move his eyes. Then I went
to the opposite corner of the cage and said in Arabic: ‘I know you; come
here to me.’ He instantly turned his head toward me. I repeated the
words, and thereupon he came to the corner where I was standing, pressed
his huge, ungainly head against the bars of the cage, and looked in my
face with a touching delight while I stroked his muzzle. I have two or
three times found a lion who recognised the same language, and the
expression of his eyes for an instant seemed positively human.”
He also tells his experience with a tame lioness in Africa. “In a short
time we were very good friends. She knew me, and always seemed glad to
see me, though I sometimes teased her a little by getting astride of her
back, or sitting upon her when she was lying down. When she was in a
playful mood she would come to meet me as far as the rope would let her,
get her forepaws around my leg and then take it in her mouth, as if she
were going to eat me up. I was a little alarmed when she did this for
the first time; but I soon saw that she was merely in play, and had no
thought of hurting me, so I took her by the ears and slapped her sides,
until at last she lay down and licked my hand. Her tongue was as coarse
as a nutmeg grater, and my hand felt as if the skin was being rasped
off.
“There was also a leopard in the garden with which I used to play a
great deal, but which I never loved so well as the lioness. He was
smaller and more active, and soon learned to jump upon my shoulders when
I stooped down, or to climb up the tree to which he was tied, whenever I
commanded him. But he was not so affectionate as the lioness, and
sometimes forgot to draw in his claws when he played, so that he not
only tore my clothing, but scratched my hands. I still have the marks of
one of his teeth on the back of my right hand.
“My old lioness was never rough, and I have frequently, when she had
stretched out to take a nap, sat upon her back for half an hour at a
time, smoking my pipe or reading.
“I assure you I was very sorry to part with her, and when I saw her for
the last time one moonlight night, I gave her a good hug and an
affectionate kiss. She would have kissed me back if her mouth had not
been too large; but she licked my hand to show that she loved me, then
laid her big head upon the ground and went to sleep.
“Dear old lioness! I wonder if you ever think of me. I wonder if you
would know me, should we ever see each other again.”
If our late minister to Berlin, the accomplished poet, linguist, and
cosmopolitan, could give his attention to animals as friends and
companions, there can be nothing belittling in reading their praises as
said or sung by those whom we all delight to honour.
Hamerton, indeed, makes a comparison in which we come out but second
best. He says: “How much weariness has there been in the human race
during the last fifty years, because the human race can not stop
politically where it was, and, finding no rest, is pushed to a strange
future that the wisest look forward to gravely, as certainly very dark
and probably very dangerous! Meanwhile, have the bees suffered any
political uneasiness? have they doubted the use of royalty or begrudged
the cost of their queen? Have those industrious republicans, the ants,
gone about uneasily seeking after a sovereign? Has the eagle grown weary
of his isolation and sought strength in the practice of socialism? Has
the dog become too enlightened to endure any longer his position as
man’s humble friend, and contemplated a canine union for mutual
protection against masters? No; the great principles of these existences
are superior to change, and that which man is perpetually seeking—a
political order in perfect harmony with his condition—the brute has
inherited with his instincts.”
Cowper, in The Task, devotes several pages to the proper treatment of
animals, and expresses his admiration for their many noble qualities:
Distinguished much by reason, and still more
By our capacity of grace divine,
From creatures, that exist but for our sake,
Which, having served us, perish, we are held
Accountable; and God some future day,
Will reckon with us roundly for the abuse
Of what he deems no mean or trivial trust.
Superior as we are, they yet depend
Not more on human help than we on theirs.
Their strength, or speed, or vigilance, were given
In aid of our defects. In some are found
Such teachable and apprehensive parts,
That man’s attainments in his own concerns,
Matched with the expertness of the brutes in theirs,
Are ofttimes vanquished and thrown far behind.
Some show that nice sagacity of smell,
And read with such discernment, in the port
And figure of the man, his secret aim,
That oft we owe our safety to a skill
We could not teach, and must despair to learn.
Bryant, in his well-known Lines to a Waterfowl, has a striking thought:
... He who from zone to zone
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
BOW-WOW-WOW!
The dogge forsaketh not his master; no, not when he is starcke
dead.—DR. CAIUS.
Dog with the pensive hazel eyes,
Shaggy coat, or feet of tan,
What do you think when you look so wise
Into the face of your fellow, man?
—W. C. OLMSTED.
DEVOTED TO DOGS.
We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven
has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.—GEORGE
ELIOT.
Literature, history, and biography are full to overflowing of instances
of affection between dogs and their owners. Remember the dog Argus,
which died of joy on the return of his master Ulysses after twenty
years’ absence. The story is touchingly told in Homer’s Odyssey:
“As he draws near the gates of his own palace, he espies, dying of old
age, disease, and neglect, his dog Argus—the companion of many a long
chase in happier days. His instinct at once detects his old master, even
through the disguise lent by the goddess of wisdom. Before he sees him
he knows his voice and step, and raises his ears—
And when he marked Odysseus in the way,
And could no longer to his lord come near,
Fawned with his tail and drooped in feeble play
His ears. Odysseus, turning, wiped a tear.”
It is poor Argus’s last effort, and the old hound turns and dies—
Just having seen Odysseus in the twentieth year.
Egyptians held the dog in adoration as the representative of one of the
celestial signs, and the Indians considered him one of the sacred forms
of their deities. The dog is placed at the feet of women in monuments,
to symbolize affection and fidelity; and many of the Crusaders are
represented with their feet on a dog, to show that they followed the
standard of the Lord as a dog follows the footsteps of his master.
“Man,” said Burns, “is the god of the dog”—knows nothing higher to
reverence and obey. Kings and queens have found their most faithful
friends among dogs. Frederick the Great allowed his elegant furniture at
Potsdam to be nearly ruined by his dogs, who jumped upon the satin
chairs and slept cosily on the luxurious sofas, and quite a cemetery may
still be seen devoted to his pets. The pretty spaniel belonging to Mary
Queen of Scots deserves honourable mention. He loved his ill-starred
mistress when her human friends had forsaken her; nestled close by her
side at the execution, and had to be forced away from her bleeding body.
One of the prettiest pictures of the Princess of Wales is taken with a
tiny spaniel in her arms.
Before going further, just recall some of the most famous dogs of
mythology, literature, and life, simply giving their names for want of
space:
Arthur’s dog Cavall.
Dog of Catherine de’ Medicis, Phœbê, a lapdog.
Cuthullin’s dog Luath, a swift-footed hound.
Dora’s dog Jip.
Douglas’s dog Luffra, from The Lady of the Lake.
Fingal’s dog Bran.
Landseer’s dog Brutus, painted as The Invader of the Larder.
Llewellyn’s dog Gelert.
Lord Lurgan’s dog Master McGrath: presented at court by the express
desire of Queen Victoria.
Maria’s dog Silvio, in Sterne’s Sentimental Journey.
Punch’s dog Toby.
Sir Walter Scott’s dogs Maida, Camp, Hamlet.
Dog of the Seven Sleepers, Katmir.
The famous Mount St. Bernard dog, which saved forty human beings, was
named Barry. His stuffed skin is preserved in the museum at Berne.
Sir Isaac Newton’s dog, who by overturning a candle destroyed much
precious manuscript, was named Diamond.
The ancient Xantippus caused his dog to be interred on an eminence near
the sea, which has ever since retained his name, Cynossema. There are
even legends of nations that have had a dog for their king. It is said
that barking is not a natural faculty, but is acquired through the dog’s
desire to talk with man. In a state of nature, dogs simply whine and
howl.
When Alexander encountered Diogĕnês the cynic, the young Macedonian king
introduced himself with the words, “I am Alexander, surnamed ‘the
Great.’” To which the philosopher replied, “And I am Diogĕnês, surnamed
‘the Dog.’” The Athenians raised to his memory a pillar of Parian
marble, surmounted with a dog, and bearing the following inscription:
“Say, dog, what guard you in that tomb?”
A dog. “His name?” Diogĕnês. “From far?”
Sinopé. “He who made a tub his home?”
The same; now dead, among the stars a star.
What man or woman worth remembering but has loved at least one dog?
Hamerton, in speaking of the one dog—the special pet and dear companion
of every boy and many a girl, from Ulysses to Bismarck—observes that
“the comparative shortness of the lives of dogs is the only imperfection
in the relation between them and us. If they had lived to threescore and
ten, man and dog might have travelled through life together; but as it
is, we must have either a succession of affections, or else, when the
first is buried in its early grave, live in a chill condition of
dog-lessness.” I thank him for coining that compound word. Almost every
one might, like Grace Greenwood and Gautier, write a History of my Pets,
and make a most readable book. Bismarck honoured one of his dogs, Nero,
with a formal funeral. The body was borne on the shoulders of eight
workmen dressed in black to a grave in the park. He had been poisoned,
and a large reward was offered for the discovery of the assassin. The
prince, statesman, diplomatist, does not believe in dog-lessness, and
gives to another hound, equally devoted, the same intense affection. “My
dog—where is my dog?” are his first words on alighting from a railway,
as Sultan must travel second class. He even mixes the food for his dogs
with his own hands, believing it will make them love him the more.
Another Nero was the special companion of Mrs. Carlyle, a little white
dog, who had for his playmate a black cat, whose name was Columbine, and
Carlyle says that during breakfast, whenever the dining-room door was
opened, Nero and Columbine would come waltzing into the room in the
height of joy. He went with his mistress everywhere, led by a chain for
fear of thieves. For eleven years he cheered her life at Craigenputtock,
“the loneliest nook in Britain.”
Nero’s death was a tragical one. In October, 1859, while walking out
with the maid one evening, a butcher’s cart driving furiously round a
sharp corner ran over his throat. He was not killed on the spot,
although his mistress says “he looked killed enough at first.” The poor
fellow was put into a warm bath, wrapped up in flannels, and left to
die. The morning found him better, however; he was able to wag his tail
in response to the caresses of his mistress.
Little by little he recovered the use of himself, but it was ten days
before he could bark.
He lived four months after this, docile, affectionate, loyal up to his
last hour, but weak and full of pain. The doctor was obliged at last to
give him prussic acid. They buried him at the top of the garden in
Cheyne Row, and planted cowslips round his grave, and his loving
mistress placed a stone tablet, with name and date, to mark the last
resting place of her blessed dog.
“I could not have believed,” writes Carlyle in the Memorials, “my grief
then and since would have been the twentieth part of what it was—nay,
that the want of him would have been to me other than a riddance. Our
last midnight walk together—for he insisted on trying to come—January
31st, is still painful to my thought. Little dim white speck of life, of
love, fidelity, and feeling, girdled by the darkness of night eternal.”
Is not that a delightful revelation of tenderness in the heart of the
grand old growler, biographer, critic, historian, essayist, prophet,
whom most people feared? I like to read it again and again.
The selfish, cynical Horace Walpole sat up night after night with his
dying Rosette. He wrote: “Poor Rosette has suffered exquisitely; you may
believe I have too,” and honoured her with this epitaph:
Sweetest roses of the year
Strew around my Rose’s bier.
Calmly may the dust repose
Of my pretty, faithful Rose;
And if yon cloud-topped hill behind
This frame dissolved, this breath resigned,
Some happier isle, some humbler heaven,
Be to my trembling wishes given,
Admitted to that equal sky
May sweet Rose bear me company.
And of the dog Touton, left him by Madame du Deffand, he said: “It is
incredible how fond I am of it; but I have no occasion to brag of my
_dogmanity_” (another expressive word). He said, “A dog, though a
flatterer, is still a friend.” Byron, that egotistic, misanthropic
genius, composed an epitaph on Boatswain, his favourite dog, whose death
threw the moody poet into deepest melancholy. The dog’s grave is to the
present day shown among the conspicuous objects at Newstead. The poet,
in one of his impulsive moments, gave orders in a provision of his
will—ultimately however, cancelled—that his own body should be buried by
the side of Boatswain, as his truest and only friend. This noble animal
was seized with madness, and so little was his lordship aware of the
fact, that at the beginning of the attack he more than once, during the
paroxysms, wiped away the dreaded saliva from his mouth. After his death
Lord Byron wrote to his friend Mr. Hodges: “Boatswain is dead. He died
in a state of madness on the 18th, after suffering much, yet retaining
all the gentleness of his nature to the last, never attempting to do the
least injury to any one near him. I have now lost everything excepting
old Murray.” Visitors to his old estate will find a marked monument with
this tribute:
NEAR THIS SPOT
ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS OF
ONE THAT POSSESSED BEAUTY, WITHOUT VANITY,
STRENGTH, WITHOUT INSOLENCE,
COURAGE, WITHOUT FEROCITY,
AND ALL THE VIRTUES OF MAN, WITHOUT HIS VICES.
THIS PRAISE, WHICH WOULD BE
UNMEANING FLATTERY
IF INSCRIBED OVER HUMAN ASHES,
IS BUT A JUST TRIBUTE
TO THE MEMORY OF BOATSWAIN, A DOG,
WHO WAS BORN IN NEWFOUNDLAND, MAY, 1803,
AND DIED
AT NEWSTEAD ABBEY, NOVEMBER 18, 1808.
_Epitaph._
When some proud son of man returns to earth
Unknown to glory, but upheld by birth,
The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe,
And storied urns record who rests below;
When all is done, upon the tomb is seen
Not what he was, but what he should have been.
But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, the foremost to defend.
Whose honest heart is still his master’s own,
Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
Unhonoured falls, unnoticed all his worth,
Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth;
While man, vain insect, hopes to be forgiven,
And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.
O man, thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debased by slavery or corrupt by power,
Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust.
Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit.
By Nature vile, ennobled but by name,
Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.
Ye who perchance behold this simple urn
Pass on, it honours none you wish to mourn;
To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise:
I never knew but one, and here he lies.
Walter Scott’s dogs had an extraordinary fondness for him. Swanston
declares that he had to stand by, when they were leaping and fawning
about him, to beat them off lest they should knock him down. One day,
when he and Swanston were in the armory, Maida (the dog which now lies
at his feet in the monument at Edinburgh), being outside, had peeped in
through the window, a beautifully painted one, and the instant she got a
glance of her beloved master she bolted right through it and at him.
Lady Scott, starting at the crash, exclaimed, “O gracious, shoot her!”
But Scott, caressing her with the utmost coolness, said, “No, no, mamma,
though she were to break every window at Abbotsford.” He was engaged for
an important dinner party on the day his dog Camp died, but sent word
that he could not go, “on account of the death of a dear old friend.” He
tried early one morning to make the fire of peat burn, and after many
efforts succeeded in some degree. At this moment one of the dogs,
dripping from a plunge in the lake, scratched and whined at the window.
Sir Walter let the “puir creature” in, who, coming up before the little
fire, shook his shaggy hide, sending a perfect shower bath over the fire
and over a great table of loose manuscripts. The tender-hearted author,
eying the scene with his usual serenity, said slowly, “O dear, ye’ve
done a great deal of mischief!” This equanimity is only equalled by Sir
Isaac Newton’s exclamation, now, alas! pronounced a fiction, “O Diamond,
Diamond, little dost thou know the injury thou hast done!”
“The wisest dog I ever had,” said Scott, “was what is called the bulldog
terrier. I taught him to understand a great many words, insomuch that I
am positive that the communication betwixt the canine species and
ourselves might be greatly enlarged. Camp once bit the baker who was
bringing bread to the family. I beat him and explained the enormity of
the offence, after which, to the last moment of his life, he never heard
the least allusion to the story, in whatever voice or tone it was
mentioned, without getting up and retiring to the darkest corner of the
room with great appearance of distress. Then if you said, ‘The baker was
well paid,’ or ‘The baker was not hurt, after all,’ Camp came forth from
his hiding place, capered and barked and rejoiced. When he was unable,
toward the end of his life, to attend me when on horseback, he used to
watch for my return, and the servant would tell him ‘his master was
coming down the hill’ or ‘through the moor,’ and, although he did not
use any gesture to explain his meaning, Camp was never known to mistake
him, but either went out at the front to go up the hill or at the back
to get down to the moorside. He certainly had a singular knowledge of
spoken language.”
Once when the great novelist was sitting for his picture he exclaimed,
“I am as tired of the operation as old Maida, who has been so often
sketched that he got up and walked off with signs of loathing whenever
he saw an artist unfurl his paper and handle his brushes!”
It is well known that a dog instantly discerns a friend from an enemy;
in fact, he seems to know all those who are friendly to his race. There
are few things more touching in the life of this great man than the fact
that, when he walked in the streets of Edinburgh, nearly every dog he
met came and fawned on him, wagged his tail at him, and thus showed his
recognition of the friend of his race.
_Àpropos_ of understanding what is said to them, Bayard Taylor says, “I
know of nothing more moving, indeed semi-tragic, than the yearning
helplessness in the face of a dog who understands what is said to him
and can not answer.”
Walter Savage Landor, irascible, conceited, tempestuous, had a deep
affection for dogs, as well as all other dumb creatures, that was
interesting. “Of all the Louis Quatorze rhymesters I tolerate La
Fontaine only, for I never see an animal, unless it be a parrot, a
monkey, or a pug dog, or a serpent, that I do not converse with it
either openly or secretly.”
The story of the noble martyr Gellert, who risked his own life for his
master’s child, only to be suspected and slain by the hand he loved so
well, is perhaps too familiar to be repeated, and yet I can not resist
Spenser’s version:
The huntsman missed his faithful hound; he did not respond to horn or
cry. But at last as Llewelyn “homeward hied” the dog bounded to greet
him, smeared with gore. On entering the house he found his child’s couch
also stained with blood, and the infant nowhere to be seen. Believing
Gellert had devoured the boy, he plunged his sword in his side, but soon
discovered the cherub alive and rosy, while beneath the couch, gaunt and
tremendous, a wolf torn and killed:
Ah, what was then Llewelyn’s woe!
Best of thy kind, adieu.
The frantic blow which laid thee low
This heart shall ever rue.
And now a gallant tomb they raise,
With costly sculpture decked;
And marbles storied with his praise
Poor Gellert’s bones protect.
There never could the spearman pass
Or forester unmoved;
There oft the tear-besprinkled grass
Llewelyn’s sorrow proved.
And there he hung his horn and spear,
And there, as evening fell,
In fancy’s ear he oft would hear
Poor Gellert’s dying yell.
And till great Snowdon’s rocks grow old,
And cease the storm to brave,
The consecrated spot shall hold
The name of “Gellert’s Grave.”
Dr. John Brown’s exquisite prose poem of Rab and his Friends is as
lasting a memorial to that dog as any built of granite or marble. The
dog is emphatically the central figure, the hero of the story. The
author sat for his picture with Rab by his side, and we are told that
his interest in a half-blind and aged pet was evinced in the very last
hours of his life. The dog has figured as the real attraction in several
novels, and Ouida lets Puck tell his own story. Mrs. Stowe devoted one
volume to Stories about our Dogs, and wrote also A Dog’s Mission.
Matthew Arnold had many pets, and not only loved them in life, but has
given them immortality by his appreciative tributes to dogs, and cat and
canary. Here are two dog requiems:
GEIST’S GRAVE.
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:
FLUSH OR FAUNUS.
You see this dog. It was but yesterday
I mused forgetful of his presence here;
Till thought on thought drew downward tear on tear;
When from the pillow, where wet-cheeked I lay,
A head as hairy as Faunus’ thrust its way
Right sudden against my face, two golden, clear,
Great eyes astonished mine; a drooping ear
Did flap me on either cheek to dry the spray.
I started first; as some Arcadian
Amazed by goatly god in twilight grove;
But as the bearded vision closelier ran
My tears off, I knew Flush, and rose above
Surprise and sadness; thanking the true Pan
Who by low creatures leads to heights of love.
The poem is equally beautiful:
TO FLUSH, MY DOG.
Other dogs may be thy peers
Haply in these drooping ears
And this glossy fairness.
But of _thee_ it shall be said,
This dog watched beside a bed
Day and night unweary;
Watched within a curtained room,
Where no sunbeam brake the gloom
Round the sick and weary.
Roses gathered for a vase
In that chamber died apace,
Beam and breeze resigning;
This dog only waited on,
Knowing that when light is gone
Love remains for shining.
Other dogs in thymy dew
Tracked the hares and followed through
Sunny moor or meadow;
This dog only crept and crept
Next a languid cheek that slept,
Sharing in the shadow.
Other dogs of loyal cheer
Bounded at the whistle clear,
Up the woodside hieing;
This dog only watched in reach
Of a faintly uttered speech,
Or a louder sighing.
And if one or two quick tears
Dropped upon his glossy ears,
Or a sigh came double,
Up he sprang in eager haste,
Fawning, fondling, breathing fast
In a tender trouble.
And this dog was satisfied
If a pale, thin hand would glide
Down his dewlaps sloping,
Which he pushed his nose within,
After platforming his chin
On the palm left open.
This dog, if a friendly voice
Call him now to blither choice
Than such chamber keeping,
“Come out,” praying from the door,
Presseth backward as before,
Up against me leaping.
Therefore to this dog will I,
Tenderly, not scornfully,
Render praise and favour;
With my hand upon his head,
Is my benediction said,
Therefore and forever.
· · · · ·
Mrs. Browning said in a note to this poem: “This dog was the gift of my
dear and admired friend, Miss Mitford, and belongs to the beautiful race
she has rendered celebrated among English and American readers.”
Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, addressed a long poem to his dog, ending:
When my last bannock’s on the hearth,
Of that thou canna want thy share;
While I ha’e house or hauld on earth,
My Hector shall ha’e shelter there.
Another favourite was honoured by Dr. Holland, the essayist, lecturer,
magazine editor, and poet:
TO MY DOG BLANCO.
My dear, dumb friend, low lying there,
A willing vassal at my feet,
Glad partner of my home and fare,
My shadow in the street.
I look into your great brown eyes,
Where love and loyal homage shine,
And wonder where the difference lies
Between your soul and mine!
For all of good that I have found
Within myself or human kind,
Hath royally informed and crowned
Your gentle heart and mind.
I scan the whole broad earth around
For that one heart which, leal and true,
Bears friendship without end or bound,
And find the prize in you.
I trust you as I trust the stars;
Nor cruel loss, nor scoff of pride,
Nor beggary, nor dungeon bars,
Can move you from my side!
As patient under injury
As any Christian saint of old,
As gentle as a lamb with me,
But with your brothers bold;
More playful than a frolic boy,
More watchful than a sentinel,
By day and night your constant joy
To guard and please me well.
I clasp your head upon my breast—
The while you whine and lick my hand—
And thus our friendship is confessed,
And thus we understand!
Ah, Blanco! did I worship God
As truly as you worship me,
Or follow where my Master trod
With your humility—
Did I sit fondly at his feet,
As you, dear Blanco, sit at mine,
And watch him with a love as sweet,
My life would grow divine!
Maria Edgeworth wrote to her aunt, Mrs. Ruxton, in 1819, “I see my
little dog on your lap, and feel your hand patting his head, and hear
your voice telling him that it is for Maria’s sake he is there.”
What a pathetic friendship existed between Emily Brontë and the dog whom
she was sure could understand every word she said to him! “She always
fed the animals herself; the old cat; Flossy, her favourite spaniel;
Keeper, the fierce bulldog, her own constant dear companion, whose
portrait, drawn by her own spirited hand, is still extant. And the
creatures on the moor were all in a sense her pets and familiar with
her. The intense devotion of this silent woman to all manner of dumb
creatures has something almost inexplicable. As her old father and her
sisters followed her to the grave they were joined by another mourner,
Keeper, Emily’s dog. He walked in front of all, first in the rank of
mourners, and perhaps no other creature had loved the dead woman quite
so well. When they had laid her to sleep in the dark, airless vault
under the church, and when they had crossed the bleak churchyard and had
entered the empty house again, Keeper went straight to the door of the
room where his mistress used to sleep, and laid down across the
threshold. There he howled piteously for many days, knowing not that no
lamentations could wake her any more.”
Dogs were supposed by the ancient Gaels to know of the death of a
friend, however far they might be separated. But this is getting too
gloomy. Do you know how the proverb originated “as cold as a dog’s
nose”? An old verse tells us:
There sprang a leak in Noah’s ark,
Which made the dog begin to bark;
Noah took his nose to stop the hole,
And hence his nose is always cold.
No one has expressed more appreciation of the noble qualities of dogs
than the abstracted, philosophic Wordsworth.
INCIDENT
_Characteristic of a Favourite Dog._
On his morning rounds the master
Goes to learn how all things fare;
Searches pasture after pasture,
Sheep and cattle eyes with care;
And, for silence or for talk,
He hath comrades in his walk;
Four dogs, each pair of different breed,
Distinguished two for scent and two for speed.
See a hare before him started!
Off they fly in earnest chase;
Every dog is eager-hearted,
All the four are in the race:
And the hare whom they pursue,
Hath an instinct what to do;
Her hope is near: no turn she makes;
But, like an arrow, to the river takes.
Deep the river was, and crusted
Thinly by a one night’s frost;
But the nimble hare hath trusted
To the ice, and safely crost;
She hath crossed, and without heed
All are following at full speed,
When, lo! the ice, so thinly spread,
Breaks—and the greyhound, Dart, is over head!
Better fate have Prince and Swallow—
See them cleaving to the sport!
Music has no heart to follow,
Little Music, she stops short.
She hath neither wish nor heart,
Hers is now another part:
A loving creature she, and brave!
And fondly strives her struggling friend to save.
From the brink her paws she stretches,
Very hands as you would say!
And afflicting moans she fetches,
As he breaks the ice away.
For herself she hath no fears,
Him alone she sees and hears,
Makes efforts and complainings; nor gives o’er
Until her fellow sank, and reappeared no more.
TRIBUTE
_To the Memory of the Same Dog._
Lie here, without a record of thy worth,
Beneath a covering of the common earth!
It is not from unwillingness to praise,
Or want of love, that here no stone we raise;
More thou deservest; but _this_ man gives to man,
Brother to brother, _this_ is all we can.
Yet they to whom thy virtues made thee dear
Shall find thee through all changes of the year:
This oak points out thy grave; the silent tree
Will gladly stand a monument of thee.
Cowper, who tenderly loved all animals, did not fail to honour a dog
with a poetical tribute in The Dog and the Water Lily, celebrating the
devotion of “my spaniel, prettiest of his race.”
It was the time when Ouse displayed
His lilies newly blown;
Their beauties I intent surveyed,
And one I wished my own.
With cane extended far, I sought
To steer it close to land;
But still the prize, though nearly caught,
Escaped my eager hand.
Beau marked my unsuccessful pains
With fixed, considerate face,
And puzzling set his puppy brains
To comprehend, the case.
But chief myself, I will enjoin,
Awake at duty’s call,
To show a love as prompt as thine
To Him who gives us all.
But with a chirrup clear and strong,
Dispersing all his dream,
I thence withdrew, and followed long
The windings of the stream.
My ramble finished, I returned.
Beau, trotting far before,
The floating wreath again discerned,
And, plunging, left the shore.
I saw him, with that lily cropped,
Impatient swim to meet
My quick approach, and soon he dropped
The treasure at my feet.
Charmed with this sight, the world, I cried,
Shall hear of this, thy deed:
My dog shall mortify the pride
Of man’s superior breed.
Forster tells us fully of Dickens’s devotion to his many dogs, quoting
the novelist’s inimitable way of describing his favourites. In Dr.
Marigold there is an especially good bit about “me and my dog.”
“My dog knew as well as I did when she was on the turn. Before she broke
out he would give a howl and bolt. How he knew it was a mystery to me,
but the sure and certain knowledge of it would wake him up out of his
soundest sleep, and would give a howl and bolt. At such times I wished I
was him.” After the death of child and wife, he says: “Me and my dog was
all the company left in the cart now, and the dog learned to give a
short bark when they wouldn’t bid, and to give another and a nod of his
head when I asked him ‘Who said half a crown?’ He attained to an immense
height of popularity, and, I shall always believe, taught himself
entirely out of his own head to growl at any person in the crowd that
bid as low as sixpence. But he got to be well on in years, and one night
when I was convulsing York with the spectacles he took a convulsion on
his own account, upon the very footboard by me, and it finished him.”
Mr. Laurence Hutton, in the St. Nicholas, has lately expressed his
sentiments about dogs, as follows:
“It was Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, I think, who spoke in sincere
sympathy of the man who “led a dog-less life.” It was Mr. “Josh
Billings,” I know, who said that in the whole history of the world there
is but one thing that money can not buy—to wit, the wag of a dog’s tail.
And it was Prof. John C. Van Dyke who declared the other day, in
reviewing the artistic career of Landseer, that he made his dogs too
human. It was the great Creator himself who made dogs too human—so human
that sometimes they put humanity to shame.
“I have been the friend and confidant of three dogs, who helped to
humanize me for the space of a quarter of a century, and who had souls
to be saved, I am sure, and when I cross the Stygian River I expect to
find on the other shore a trio of dogs wagging their tails almost off in
their joy at my coming, and with honest tongues hanging out to lick my
hands and my feet. And then I am going, with these faithful, devoted
dogs at my heels, to talk dogs over with Dr. John Brown, Sir Edward
Landseer, and Mr. Josh Billings.”
Do dogs have souls—a spark of life that after death lives on elsewhere?
Many have hoped so, from Wesley to the little boy who has lost his
cherished comrade.
It is certain that dogs show qualities that in a man would be called
reason, quick apprehension, presence of mind, courage, self-abnegation,
affection unto death.
At the close of this chapter may I be allowed to tell of two of my
special friends—one a fox terrier, owned by Mr. Howard Ticknor, of
Boston; the other my own interesting pet—who have never failed to learn
any trick suggested to them? Antoninus Pius, called Tony for short, goes
through more than a score of wonderful accomplishments, such as playing
on the piano, crossing his paws and looking extremely artistic, if not
inspired, dancing a skirt dance, spinning on a flax wheel, performing on
a tambourine swung by a ribbon round his neck; plays pattycake with his
mistress. And my own intelligent Yorkshire terrier mounts a chair back
and preaches with animation, eloquence, and forcible gestures; knocks
down a row of books and then sits on them, as a book reviewer; stands in
a corner with right paw uplifted, as a tableau of Liberty enlightening
the World; rings a bell repeatedly and with increasing energy, to call
us to the table; sings with head and eyes uplifted, to accompaniment of
harmonica—and each is just beginning his education.
I have read lately an account of a knowing dog, with a sort of sharp
cockney ability, who used to go daily with penny in mouth and buy a
roll. Once one right out of the oven was given to him; he dropped it,
seized his money off the counter, and changed his baker.
COMPLIMENTS TO CATS.
You may own a cat, but cannot govern one.
TO A KITTEN.
But not alone by cottage fire
Do rustics rude thy feats admire;
The learnèd sage, whose thoughts explore
The widest range of human lore;
Or, with unfettered fancy fly
Through airy heights of poesy;
Pausing, smiles with altered air
To see thee climb his elbow-chair,
Or, struggling with the mat below,
Hold warfare with his slippered toe.
JOANNA BAILLIE.
CATS.
God made the cat in order to give to man the pleasurable sense of having
caressed the tiger.
MÉRY.
Public sentiment is not so unanimously in favour of cats, yet they have
had their warm admirers, while in Egypt they were adored as
divine—worshipped as an emblem of the moon. When a cat died, the owners
gave the body a showy funeral, went into mourning, and shaved off their
eyebrows. Diodorus tells of a Roman soldier who was condemned to death
for killing a cat. It is said that Cambyses, King of Persia, when he
went to fight the Egyptians, fastened before every soldier’s breast a
live cat. Their enemies dared not run the risk of hurting their sacred
pets, and so were conquered.
Artists, monarchs, poets, diplomatists, religious leaders, authors, have
all condescended to care for cats. A mere list of their names would make
a big book. For instance, Godefroi Mind, a German artist, was called the
Raphael of Cats. People would hunt him up in his attic, and pay large
prices for his pictures. In the long winter evenings he amused himself
carving tiny cats out of chestnuts, and could not make them fast enough
for those who wanted to buy. Mohammed was so fond of his cat Muezza that
once, when she was sleeping on his sleeve, he cut off the sleeve rather
than disturb her. Andrew Doria, one of the rulers of Venice, not only
had a portrait painted of his pet cat, but after her death had her
skeleton preserved as a treasure. Richelieu’s special favourite was a
splendid Angora, his resting place being the table covered with state
papers. Montaigne used to rest himself by a frolic with his cat.
Fontenelle liked to place his “Tom” in an armchair and deliver an
oration before him. The cat of Cardinal Wolsey sat by his side when he
received princes. Petrarch had his pet feline embalmed and placed in his
apartment.
You see, the idea of the cat being the pet of old maids alone is far
from true. Edward Lear, of Nonsense Verses fame, wrote of himself:
He has many friends, laymen and clerical;
Old Foss is the name of his cat;
His body is perfectly spherical;
He weareth a runcible hat.
Wordsworth wrote about a Kitten and the Falling Leaves. A volume of two
hundred and eighty-five pages of poems in all languages, consecrated to
the memory of a single cat, was published at Milan in 1741. Shelley
wrote verses to a cat.
It seems unjust to assert that the cat is incapable of personal
attachment, when she has won the affection of so many of earth’s great
ones. The skull of Morosini’s cat is preserved among the relics of that
Venetian worthy. Andrea Doria’s cat was painted with him. Sir Henry
Wyat’s gratitude to the cat who saved him from starvation in the Tower
of London by bringing him pigeons to eat, caused this remark: “You shall
not find his picture anywhere but with a cat beside him.” Cowper often
wrote about his cats and kittens. Horace Walpole wrote to Gray, mourning
the loss of his handsomest cat, and Gray replied: “I know Zara and
Zerlina, or rather I knew them both together, for I can not justly say
which was which. Then, as to your handsomest cat, I am no less at a
loss; as well as knowing one’s handsomest cat is always the cat one
likes best, or, if one be alive and the other dead, it is usually the
latter that is handsomest. Besides, if the point were so clear, I hope
you do not think me so ill bred as to forget my interest in the
survivor—oh, no! I would rather seem to mistake, and imagine, to be
sure, that it must be the tabby one.” It was the tabby; her death being
sudden and pitiful, tumbling from a “lofty vase’s side” while trying to
secure a goldfish for her dinner. Gray sent Walpole an ode inspired by
the misfortune, in which he said:
What woman’s heart can gold despise?
What cat’s averse to fish?
and thus describes the final scene:
Eight times emerging from the flood,
She mewed to every watery god
Some speedy aid to send.
No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred,
Nor cruel Tom nor Susan heard.
A favourite has no friend.
Upon Gray’s death, Walpole placed Zerlina’s vase upon a pedestal marked
with the first stanza.
Jeremy Bentham at first christened his cat Langbourne; afterward, Sir
John Langbourne; and when very wise and dignified, the Rev. Sir John
Langbourne, D. D. Pius IX allowed his cat to sit with him at table,
waiting his turn to be fed in a most decorous manner. Théophile Gautier
tells us how beautifully his cats behaved at the dinner table. A friend
visiting Bishop Thirlwall in his retirement, thought he looked weary,
and asked him to take the big easy-chair. “Don’t you see who is already
there?” said the great churchman, pointing to a cat asleep on the
cushion. “She must not be disturbed.” Helen Hunt Jackson devoted a large
book to the praise of cats and kittens. We know that Isaac Newton was
fond of cats, for did he not make two holes in his barn door—a big one
for old pussy to go in and out, and a little one for the kitty?
Among French authors we recall Rousseau, who has much to say in favour
of felines. Colbert reared half a dozen cats in his study, and taught
them many interesting tricks. The cat supplied Perrault with one of the
most attractive subjects of his stories, and under the magical pen of
this admirable story-teller, Puss in Boots has become an example of the
power of work, industry, and _savoir-faire_. Gautier scoffs at storms
raging without, as long as he has
Sur mes genoux un chat qui se joue et folâtre,
Un livre pour veiller, un fauteil pour devenir.
Béranger, in his idyl The Cat, makes an intelligent cat a go-between of
lovers. Baudelaire returned from his wanderings in the East a devotee of
cats, and addressed to them several fine bits of verse; they are seen in
his poetry, as dogs in the paintings of Paul Veronese. Here is a sample:
Come, beauty, rest upon my loving heart,
But cease thy paws’ sharp-nailèd play,
And let me peer into those eyes that dart
Mixed agate and metallic ray.
Again:
Grave scholars and mad lovers all admire
And love, and each alike, at his full tide
Those suave and puissant cats, the fireside’s pride,
Who like the sedentary life and glow of fire.
How he enjoys, nay, revels in the musical purr!—
Those tones which purl and percolate
Deep down into my shadowy soul,
Exalt me like a fine tune’s roll,
And yield the joy love philters make.
There is no note in the world,
Nor perfect instrument I know,
Can lift my heart to such a glow
And set its vibrant chord in whirl,
As thy rich voice mysterious.
Champfleury, another French writer, has recorded that, visiting Victor
Hugo once, he found, in a room decorated with tapestries and Gothic
furniture, a cat enthroned on a dais, and apparently receiving the
homage of the company. Sainte-Beuve’s cat sat on his desk, and walked
freely over his critical essays. “I value in the cat,” says
Chateaubriand, “that indifferent and almost ungrateful temper which
prevents itself from attaching itself to any one; the indifference with
which it passes from the _salon_ to the housetop.” Marshal Turenne
amused himself for hours in playing with his kittens. The great general,
Lord Heathfield, would often appear on the walls of Gibraltar at the
time of the famous siege, attended by his favourite cats. Montaigne
wrote: “When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her
more sport than she makes me? We mutually divert each other with our
play. If I have my hour to begin or refuse, so has she.” As George Eliot
puts it, “Who can tell what just criticisms the cat may be passing on us
beings of wider speculation?” Chateaubriand’s cat Micette is well known.
He used to stroke her tail, to notify Madame Récamier that he was tired
or bored.
Cats and their friendships are not spoken of in the Bible. But they are
mentioned in Sanskrit writing two thousand years old, and, as has been
said before, they were household pets and almost idols with the
Egyptians, who mummied them in company with kings and princes. They were
also favourites in India and Persia, and can claim relationship with the
royal felines of the tropics. Simonides, in his Satire on Women, the
earliest extant, sets it down that froward women were made from cats,
just as most virtuous, industrious matrons were developed from beer. In
Mills’s History of the Crusades the cat was an important personage in
religious festivals. At Aix, in Provence, the finest he cat was wrapped
like a child in swaddling clothes and exhibited in a magnificent shrine:
every knee bent, every hand strewed flowers.
Several cats have been immortalized by panegyrics and epitaphs from
famous masters. Joachim de Bellay has left this pretty tribute:
C’est Beland, mon petit chat gris—
Beland, qui fut peraventure
Le plus bel œuvre que nature
Fit onc en matière de chats.
The pensive Selima, owned by Walpole, was mourned by Gray, and from the
Elegy we get the favourite aphorism, “A favourite has no friends.”
Arnold mourned the great Atossa. One of Tasso’s best sonnets was
addressed to his favourite cat. Cats figure in literature from Gammer
Gurton’s Needle to our own day. Shakespeare mentions the cat forty-four
times—“the harmless, necessary cat,” etc. Goldsmith wrote:
Around in sympathetic mirth
Its tricks the kitten tries;
The cricket chirrups in the hearth,
The crackling fagot flies.
Joanna Baillie wrote in the same strain.
In one of Gay’s fables about animals the cat is asked what she can do to
benefit the proposed confederation. She answers scornfully:
... These teeth, these claws,
With vigilance shall serve the cause.
The mouse destroyed by my pursuit
No longer shall your feasts pollute,
Nor eat, from nightly ambuscade
With watchful teeth your stores invade.
The story of Dick Whittington and his cat is doubtless true. All the
pictorial and architectural relics of Whittington represent him with the
cat—a black and white cat—at his left hand, or his hand resting on a
cat. One of the figures that adorned the gate at Newgate represented
Liberty with the figure of a cat lying at her feet. Whittington was a
former founder. In the cellar of his old house at Gloucester there was
found a stone, probably part of a chimney, showing in _basso-rilievo_
the figure of a boy carrying in his arms a cat. Cowper has a poem on A
Cat retired from Business. Heinrich’s verses are well known, or should
be:
The neighbours’ old cat often
Came to pay us a visit.
We made her a bow and a courtesy,
Each with a compliment in it.
After her health we asked,
Our care and regard to evince;
We have made the very same speeches
To many an old cat since.
This translation was by Mrs. Browning; many others have tried it with
success. Alfred de Musset apostrophized his cats in verse. Paul de Koch
frequently describes a favourite cat in his novels. Hoffman, the German
novelist, introduces cats into his weird and fantastic tales, and Poe
has given us The Black Cat. Keats composed a
SONNET TO A CAT:
Cat, who has passed thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroyed? How many tidbits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
Those velvet ears, but prythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me, and tell me all thy frays,
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick;
Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists,
For all thy wheezy asthma, and for all
Thy tail’s tip is nicked off, and though the fists
Of many a maid have given thee many a maul,
Still is thy fur as when the lists
In youth thou enteredst on glass-bottled wall.
Clinton Scollard writes tenderly of his lost
GRIMALKIN:
_An Elegy on Peter, aged Twelve._
In vain the kindly call; in vain
The plate for which thou once wast fain
At morn and noon and daylight’s wane,
O king of mousers.
No more I hear thee purr and purr
As in the frolic days that were,
When thou didst rub thy velvet fur
Against my trousers.
How empty are the places where
Thou erst wert frankly debonair,
Nor dreamed a dream of feline care,
A capering kitten.
The sunny haunts where, grown a cat,
You pondered this, considered that,
The cushioned chair, the rug, the mat,
By firelight smitten.
Although of few thou stood’st in dread,
How well thou knew’st a friendly tread,
And what upon thy back or head
The stroking hand meant!
A passing scent could keenly wake
Thy eagerness for chop or steak.
Yet, puss, how rarely didst thou break
The eighth commandment!
Though brief thy life, a little span
Of days compared with that of man,
The time allotted to thee ran
In smoother meter.
Now with the warm earth o’er thy breast,
O wisest of thy kind and best,
Forever mayst thou softly rest,
_In pace_—Peter.
Agnes Repplier, in her Essays in Idleness and Dozy Hours, tells us of
Agrippina and her child. Charles Dudley Warner gave to the world a
character sketch of his cat Calvin.
A young girl who was in the house with Mr. Whittier, and of whom he was
very fond, went to him one day with tearful eyes and a rueful face and
said: “My dear little kitty Bathsheba is dead, and I want you to write a
poem to put on her gravestone. I shall bury her under a rose bush!”
Without a moment’s hesitation the poet said:
Bathsheba! to whom none ever said scat!
No worthier cat
Ever sat on a mat
Or caught a rat;
_Requiescat!_
Cats are made very useful. The English Government keeps cats in public
offices, dockyards, stores, shipping, and so on. In Vienna, four cats
are employed by town magistrates to catch mice on the premises of the
municipality with a regular allowance, voted for their keeping, during
active service, afterward placed on the retired list with comfortable
pension; much better cared for than college professors or superannuated
ministers in our country. There are a certain number of cats in the
United States Post Office to protect mail bags from rats and mice; also,
in the Imperial Printing Office in France, a feline staff with a keeper.
Cats are given charge of empty corn sacks, so that they shall not be
nibbled and devoured. Cats are invaluable to farmers in barns and
outhouses, stables, and newly mown fields.
There are many proverbs about the cat. Shakespeare says,
Letting I dare not wait upon I would,
Like the poor cat i’ the adage,
meaning, expressed in another proverb,
The cat loves fish, but does not like
To wet her paws.
Good liquor will make a cat speak.
Not room to swing a cat.
They used to swing a cat to the branch of a tree as a mark to shoot at.
Honest as the cat when the meal is out of reach.
Let the cat out of the bag.
A cat was sometimes substituted for a sucking pig, and carried in a bag
to market. If a greenhorn chose to buy without examination, very well;
but if he opened the bag the trick was discovered, and he “let the cat
out of the bag.”
Sick as a cat.
Touch not a cat without a glove.
What can you have of a cat but her skin?
To be made a cat’s paw of,
referring to the fable of the monkey who took the paw of a cat to get
some roasted chestnuts from the hot ashes.
Who is to bell the cat?
alluding to the cunning old mouse who suggested that they should hang a
bell on the cat’s neck to let all mice know of her approach.
“Excellent,” said a wise young mouse, “but who will undertake the job?”
Madame Henriette Ronner has given up half of her long artistic career to
the study of cats, producing a cat world as impressive as the cattle
world of Potter or the stag and dog world of Landseer. Harrison Weirs is
one of Pussy’s most devoted adherents. He originated cat shows at
Crystal Palace, London. He says that dogs, large or small, are generally
useless; while a cat, whether petted or not, is of service. Without her,
rats and mice would overrun the house. If there were not millions of
cats there would be billions of vermin. He believes that cats are more
critical in noticing than dogs, as he has seen a cat open latched doors
and push back bolt or bar; they will wait for the butcher, hoping for
bits of meat, looking for him only on his stated days, and know the time
for the luncheon bell to ring. Dogs often bite when angry; cats seldom.
They will travel a long distance to regain home; form devoted
attachments to other animals, as horses, cocks, collies, cows, hens,
rabbits, squirrels, and even rats, and can be taught to respect the life
of birds.
Exactly opposite opinions are held by others, equally good and fair
judges, and with these the cat is considered selfish, spiteful, crafty,
treacherous, and, like a low style of politician, subservient only to
the power that feeds them, and provides a warm berth to snuggle down in.
And we find many anecdotes, well authenticated, proving them to be
docile, affectionate, good-tempered, tractable, and even possessed of
something very like intellect. In the life of Sir David Brewster, by his
daughter, we find that a cat in the house entered his room one day and
made friendship in the most affectionate manner; “looked straight at
him, jumped on my father’s knee, placed a paw on each shoulder, and
kissed him as distinctly as a cat could. From that time the philosopher
himself provided her breakfast every morning from his own plate, till
one day she disappeared, to the unbounded sorrow of her master. Nothing
was heard of her for nearly two years, when Pussy walked into the house,
neither thirsty nor footsore, made her way without hesitation to the
study, jumped on my father’s knee, placed a paw on each shoulder and
kissed him, exactly as on the first day.”
Cats can be trained to shake hands, jump over a stick, sit up on hind
legs, come at a whistle, beg like a dog, but we seldom take the trouble
to find out how easily they can be taught. Madame Piozzi (Mrs. Thrale)
tells us of Dr. Johnson’s kindness to his cat, named Hodge. When the
creature had grown old and fastidious from illness, and could eat
nothing but oysters, the gruff old lexicographer always went out himself
to buy Hodge’s dinner. Boswell adds: “I recollect Hodge one day
scrambling up Dr. Johnson’s breast apparently with much satisfaction,
while my friend, smiling and half whistling, rubbed down his back and
pulled him by the tail, and when I observed he had a fine cat, saying,
‘Why yes, sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this,’ and
then, as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, ‘But he
is a fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.’ He once gave a ludicrous account
of the despicable state of a young gentleman of good family. ‘Sir, when
I heard of him last he was running about town shooting cats.’ And then,
in a sort of friendly reverie, he added, ‘But Hodge sha’n’t be shot; no,
Hodge sha’n’t be shot.’” And this from the gruff, dogmatic thunderer who
snubbed or silenced every antagonist. Even the selfish, courtly Lord
Chesterfield left a permanent pension for his cats and their
descendants. Robert Southey has written a Memoir of the Cats of Greta
Hall. He liked to see his cats look plump and healthy, and tried to make
them comfortable and happy. When they were ill he had them carefully
nursed by the “ladies of the kitchen,” and doctored by the Keswick
apothecary. Indeed, cats and kittens were so petted and fondled at Greta
Hall by old and young that Southey sometimes called the place “Cats’
Eden.” In a letter to one of his cat-loving friends he says that “a
house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is a child
in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising three weeks.” This
memorial gives such truthful and impartial biographies of his
rat-catching friends that he deserves to be known and admired as the
Plutarch of Cats. The history was compiled for his daughter. He begins
in this way: “Forasmuch, most excellent Edith May, as you must always
feel a natural and becoming concern in whatever relates to the house
wherein you were born, and in which the first part of your life has thus
far so happily been spent, I have for your instruction and delight
composed these memoirs, to the end that the memory of such worthy
animals may not perish, but be held in deserved honour by my children
and those who shall come after them.” The sketch is too long to be
given, but it is sparkling with fun and at times tragic with sad
adventures. Their names were as remarkable as their characters: Madame
Bianchi; Pulcheria Ovid, so called because he might be presumed to be a
master in the art of love; Virgil, because something like Ma-ro might be
detected in his notes of courtship; Othello, black and jealous; Prester
John, who turned out not to be of John’s gender, and therefore had the
name altered to Pope Joan; Rumpelstilchen, a name borrowed from Grimm’s
Tales, and Hurlyburlybuss. Rumpelstilchen lived nine years. After
describing various cats, their adventures and misadventures, Madame
Bianchi disappeared, and Pulcheria soon after died of a disease epidemic
at that time among cats. “For a considerable time afterward an evil
fortune attended all our attempts at re-establishing a cattery. Ovid
disappeared and Virgil died of some miserable distemper. The Pope, I am
afraid, came to a death of which other popes have died. I suspect that
some poison which the rats had turned out of their holes proved fatal to
their enemy. For some time I feared we were at the end of our
cat-a-logue, but at last Fortune, as if to make amends for her late
severity, sent us two at once, the never-to-be-enough-praised
Rumpelstilchen, and the equally-to-be-admired Hurlyburlybuss. And ‘first
for the first of these,’ as my huge favourite and almost namesake Robert
South says in his sermons.” He then explains at length a German tale in
Grimm’s collection (a most charming tale it is, too), which gave the
former cat his strange and magi-sonant appellation. “Whence came
Hurlyburlybuss was long a mystery. He appeared here as Manco Capac did
in Peru and Quetzalcohuatl among the Aztecs—no one knew whence. He made
himself acquainted with all the philofelists of the family, attaching
himself more particularly to Mrs. Lorell; but he never attempted to
enter the house, frequently disappeared for days, and once since my
return for so long a time that he was actually believed to be dead and
veritably lamented as such. The wonder was, whither did he retire at
such times, and to whom did he belong; for neither I in my daily walks,
nor the children, nor any of the servants, ever by chance saw him
anywhere except in our own domain. There was something so mysterious in
this that in old times it might have excited strong suspicion, and he
would have been in danger of passing for a witch in disguise, or a
familiar. The mystery, however, was solved about four weeks ago, when,
as we were returning home from a walk up the Greta, Isabel saw him on
his transit across the road and the wall from Shulicson in a direction
toward the hill. But to this day we are ignorant who has the honour to
be his owner in the eye of the law, and the owner is equally ignorant of
the high favour in which Hurlyburlybuss is held, of the heroic name he
has obtained, and that his fame has extended far and wide; yea, that
with Rumpelstilchen he has been celebrated in song, and that his glory
will go down to future generations. A strong enmity existed between
these two cats of remarkable nomenclature, and many were their
altercations. Some weeks ago Hurlyburlybuss was manifestly emaciated and
enfeebled by ill health, and Rumpelstilchen with great magnanimity made
overtures of peace. The whole progress of the treaty was seen from the
parlour window. The caution with which Rumpel made his advances, the
sullen dignity with which they were received, their mutual uneasiness
when Rumpel, after a slow and wary approach seated himself whisker to
whisker with his rival, the mutual fear which restrained not only teeth
and claws but even all tones of defiance, the mutual agitation of their
tails, which, though they did not expand with anger could not be kept
still for suspense, and lastly the manner in which Hurly retreated, like
Ajax, still keeping his face toward his old antagonist, were worthy to
have been represented by that painter who was called the Raphael of
Cats. The overture, I fear, was not accepted as generously as it was
made, for no sooner had Hurlyburlybuss recovered strength than
hostilities were recommenced with greater violence than before. Dreadful
were the combats which ensued.... All means of reconciling them and
making them understand how goodly a thing it is for cats to dwell
together in peace, and what fools they are to quarrel and tear each
other, are vain. The proceedings of the Society for the Abolition of War
are not more utterly ineffectual and hopeless. All we can do is to act
more impartially than the gods did between Achilles and Hector, and
continue to treat both with equal regard.” I will only add the closing
words: “And thus having brought down these Memoirs of the Cats of Greta
Hall to the present day, I commit the precious memorial to your keeping.
Most dissipated and light-heeled daughter, your most diligent and
light-hearted father, Keswick, 18 June, 1824.” Rumpel lived nine years,
surrounded by loving attentions, and when he died, May 18, 1833, Southey
wrote to an old friend, Grosvenor Bedford: “Alas! Grosvenor, this day
poor old Rumpel was found dead, after as long and happy a life as cat
could wish for, if cats form wishes on that subject. There should be a
court mourning in cat land, and if the Dragon (a cat of Mr. Bedford’s)
wear a black ribbon around his neck, or a band of crepe, _à la
militaire_, round one of the forepaws, it will be but a becoming mark of
respect. As we have no catacombs here, he is to be decently interred in
the orchard, and catnip planted on his grave.”
Among modern celebrities who are fond of cats are the actress, Ellen
Terry, who loves to play with kittens on the floor; Mr. Edmund Yates,
the late novelist and journalist, whose cat used to sit down to dinner
beside her master; and Julian Hawthorne, who has a faithful friend in
his noble Tom, who invariably sits on his shoulder while he is writing.
And when Tom thinks enough work has been done for one sitting, he gets
down to the table and pulls away the manuscript. A cat denoted liberty,
and was carved at the feet of the Roman Goddess of Liberty. Cats are
seldom given credit for either intelligence or affection, but many
trustworthy anecdotes prove that they possess both, and also that they
seem to understand what is said, not only to them but about them. They
are more unsophisticated than the dog; civilization to them has not yet
become second nature.
A CAT STORY.
You may be interested in hearing of the crafty trick of a black Persian.
Prin is a magnificent animal, but withal a most dainty one, showing
distinct disapproval of any meat not cooked in the especial way he
likes, viz., roast. The cook, of whom he is very fond, determined to
break this bad habit. Stewed or boiled meat was accordingly put ready
for him, but, as he had often done before, he turned from it in disgust.
However, this time no fish or roast was substituted. For three days the
saucer of meat was untouched, and no other food given. But on the fourth
morning the cook was much rejoiced at finding the saucer empty. Prin ran
to meet her, and the good woman told her mistress how extra affectionate
that repentant cat was that morning. He did enjoy his dinner of roast
that day (no doubt served with a double amount of gravy). It was not
till the pot-board under the dresser was cleaned on Saturday that his
artfulness was brought to light. There, in one of the stewpans back of
the others, was the contents of the saucer of stewed meat. There was no
other animal about the place, and the other two servants were as much
astonished as the cook at the clever trick played on them by this
terribly spoiled pet of the house. But the cook was mortified at the
thought of that saucer of roast beef. I know this story to be true, and
I have known the cat for the last nine or ten years. It lives at
Clapham.
I will close this catalogue of feline attractions with two conundrums:
Why does a cat cross the road? Because it wants to get to the other
side. What is that which never was and never will be? A mouse’s nest in
a cat’s ear.
ALL SORTS.
God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear,
To give sign, we and they are his children, one family here.
BROWNING’S SAUL.
ALL SORTS.
If thy heart be right, then will every creature be to thee a mirror
of life, and a book of holy doctrine.—THOMAS À KEMPIS.
It would be pleasant to believe it was a proof of a good and tender
nature to delight in pets, but men and women, notorious for cruelty and
bad lives, have been devoted to them, lavishing tenderness, elsewhere
denied. Catullus, the famous Roman poet, wrote a lament for Lesbia’s
Sparrow; Lesbia, the shameless, false-hearted beauty who could weep for
a dead bird, but poison her husband! You often see pretty plaster heads
of Lesbia with the bird perched upon her finger, her face bent toward it
with a look that is a caress. And the poem has not lost its grace or
charm through all the centuries.
ON THE DEATH OF LESBIA’S SPARROW.
Mourn, all ye Loves and Graces! mourn,
Ye wits, ye gallants, and ye gay!
Death from my fair her bird has torn—
Her much-loved sparrows snatched away.
Her very eyes she prized not so,
For he was fond, and knew my fair
Well as young girls their mothers know,
And sought her breast and nestled there.
Once, fluttering round from place to place,
He gaily chirped to her alone;
But now that gloomy path must trace
Whence Fate permits none to return.
Accursèd shades o’er hell that lower,
Oh, be my curses on you heard!
Ye, that all pretty things devour,
Have torn from me my pretty bird.
Oh, evil deed! Oh, sparrow dead!
Oh, what a wretch, if thou canst see
My fair one’s eyes with weeping red,
And know how much she grieves for thee.
James I, of England, whom Dickens designates as “His Sowship,” to
express his detestation of his character, had a variety of dumb
favourites. Although a remorseless destroyer of animals in the chase, he
had an intense pleasure in seeing them around him happy and well cared
for in a state of domesticity. In 1623 John Bannat obtained a grant of
the king’s interest in the leases of two gardens and a tenement in the
Nuriones, on the condition of building and maintaining a house wherein
to keep and rear his Majesty’s newly imported silkworms. Sir Thomas
Dale, one of the settlers of the then newly formed colony of Virginia,
returning to Europe on leave, brought with him many living specimens of
American zoölogy, among them some flying squirrels. This coming to his
Majesty’s ears, he was seized with a boyish impatience to add them to
the private menageries in St. James’s Park. At the council table and in
the circle of his courtiers he recurs again and again to the subject,
wondering why Sir Thomas had not given him “the first pick” of his cargo
of curiosities. He reminded them how the recently arrived Muscovite
ambassador had brought him live sables, and, what he loved even better,
splendid white gyrfalcons of Iceland; and when Buckingham suggested that
in the whole of her reign Queen Elizabeth had never received live sables
from the Czar, James made special inquiries if such were really the
case. Some one of his loving subjects, desirous of ministering to his
favourite hobby, had presented him with a cream-coloured fawn. A nurse
was immediately hired for it, and the Earl of Shrewsbury commissioned to
write as follows to Miles Whytakers, signifying the royal pleasure as to
future procedure: “The king’s Majesty hath commissioned me to send this
rare beast, a white hind calf, unto you, together with a woman, his
nurse, that hath kept it and bred it up. His Majesty would have you see
it be kept in every respect as this good woman doth desire, and that the
woman be lodged and boarded by you until his Majesty come to Theobald’s
on Monday next, and then you shall know further of his pleasure. What
account his Majesty maketh of this fine beast you may guess, and no man
can suppose it to be more rare than it is; therefore I know that your
care of it will be accordingly. So in haste I bid you my hearty
farewell. At Whitehall, this 6th of November, 1611.”
About 1629 the King of Spain effected an important diversion in his own
favour by sending the king—priceless gift—an elephant and five camels.
Going through London after midnight, says a state paper, they could not
pass unseen, and the clamour and outcry raised by some street loiterers
at sight of their ponderous bulk and ungainly step, roused the sleepers
from their beds in every street through which they passed. News of this
unlooked-for addition to the Zoölogical Garden is conveyed to Theobald’s
as speedily as horseflesh, whip and spur, could do their work. Then
arose an interchange of missives to and fro betwixt the king, my lord
treasurer, and Mr. Secretary Connay, grave, earnest, deliberate, as
though involving the settlement or refusal of some treaty of peace. In
muttered sentences, not loud but deep, the thrifty lord treasurer shows
“how little he is in love with royal presents, which cost his master as
much to maintain as could a garrison.” No matter. Warrants are issued to
the officers of the Mews and to Buckingham, master of the horse, that
the elephant is to be daily well dressed and fed, but that he should not
be led forth to water, nor any admitted to see him without directions
from his keeper. The camels are to be daily grazed in the park, but
brought back at night with all possible precautions to secure them from
the vulgar gaze. The elephant had two Spaniards and two Englishmen to
take care of him, and the royal quadruped had royal fare. His keepers
affirm that from the month of September till April he must drink not
water but wyne; and from April to September “he must have a gallon of
wyne the day.” His winter allowance was six bottles per diem, but
perhaps his keepers relieved him occasionally of a portion of the
tempting beverage which they probably thought too good to waste on an
animal even if it be a royal elephant.
When Voltaire was living near Geneva he owned a large monkey which used
to attack and even bite both friends and enemies. This repulsive pet one
day gave his master three wounds in the leg, obliging him for some time
to hobble on crutches. He had named the creature Luc, and in
conversation with intimate friends he also gave the King of Prussia the
same name, because, said he, “Frederick is like my monkey, who bites
those who caress him.” As a contrast, remember how the hermit, Thoreau,
used to cultivate the acquaintance of a little mouse until it became
really tame and would play a game of bopeep with his eccentric friend.
Nothing seems too odd or disagreeable to be regarded with affection.
Lord Erskine, who always expressed a great interest in animals, had at
one time two leeches for favourites. Taken dangerously ill at
Portsmouth, he fancied that they had saved his life. Every day he gave
them fresh water and formed a friendship with them. He said he was sure
that both knew him, and were grateful for his attentions. He named them
Home and Cline, for two celebrated surgeons, and he affirmed that their
dispositions were quite different; in fact, he thought he distinguished
individuality in these black squirmers from the mire.
Even pigs have had the good fortune to interest persons of genius.
Robert Herrick had a pet pig which he fed daily with milk from a silver
tankard, and Miss Martineau had the same odd fancy. She, too, had a pet
pig which she had washed and scrubbed daily. When too ill to superintend
the operation she would listen at her window for piggie’s squeal,
advertising that the operation had commenced.
John Wilson, better known as Christopher North, loved many pets, and was
as unique in his methods with them as in all other things. His intense
fondness for animals and birds was often a trial to the rest of the
family, as when his daughter found he had made a nest for some young
gamecocks in her trunk of party dresses which was stored in the attic.
On his library table, where “fishing rods found company with Ben Jonson
and Jeremy Taylor reposed near a box of barley-sugar,” a tame sparrow he
had befriended hopped blithely about, master of the situation. This tiny
pet imagined itself the most important occupant of the room. It would
nestle in his waistcoat, hop upon his shoulder, and seemed influenced by
constant association with a giant, for it grew in stature until it was
alleged that the sparrow was gradually becoming an eagle.
The Rev. Gilbert White, who wrote the Natural History of Selborne,
speaks of a tortoise which he petted, saying, “I was much taken with its
sagacity in discerning those that show it kind offices, for as soon as
the good old lady comes in sight who has waited on it for more than
thirty years, it hobbles toward its benefactress with awkward alacrity,
but remains inattentive to strangers.” Thus not only “the ox knoweth his
owner and the ass his master’s crib,” but the most abject reptile and
torpid of beings distinguishes the hand that feeds it, and is touched
with the feelings of gratitude. Think of Jeremy Bentham growing a sort
of vetch in his garden to cram his pockets with to feed the deer in
Kensington Gardens! “I remember,” says his friend who tells the story,
“his pointing it out to me and telling me the virtuous deer were fond of
it, and ate it out of his hand.” Like Byron, he once kept a pet bear,
but he was in Russia at the time, and the wolves got into the poor
creature’s box on a terrible night and carried off a part of his face, a
depredation which the philosopher never forgot nor forgave to his dying
day. He always kept a supply of stale bread in a drawer of his dining
table for the “mousies.”
The Brownings had many pets, among them an owl, which after death was
stuffed and given an honoured position in the poet’s library. Sydney
Smith professed not to care for pets, especially disliking dogs; but he
named his four oxen Tug and Lug, Haul and Crawl, and dosed them when he
fancied they needed medicine. Miss Martineau relates that a phrenologist
examining Sydney’s head announced, “This gentleman is a naturalist,
always happy among his collections of birds and fishes.” “Sir,” said
Sydney, turning upon him solemnly with wide-open eyes—“sir, I don’t know
a fish from a bird.” But this ignorance and indifference were all
assumed. His daughter, writing of his daily home life, says: “Dinner was
scarcely over ere he called for his hat and stick and sallied forth for
his evening stroll. Each cow and calf and horse and pig were in turn
visited and fed and patted, and all seemed to welcome him; he cared for
their comforts as he cared for the comforts of every living being around
him.” He used to say: “I am for all cheap luxuries, even for animals;
now, all animals have a passion for scratching their back bones; they
break down your gates and palings to effect this. Look, this is my
Universal Scratcher, a sharp-edged pole resting on a high and low post,
adapted to every height, from a horse to a lamb. Even the Edinburgh
Reviewer can take his turn; you have no idea how popular it is.” Who
could resist repeating just here the wit’s impromptu epigram upon the
sarcastic, diminutive Jeffrey when the caustic critic was surprised
riding on the children’s pet donkey? “I still remember the joy-inspiring
laughter that burst from my father at this unexpected sight, as,
advancing toward his old friend, with a face beaming with delight, he
exclaimed:
Witty as Horatius Flaccus,
As great a Jacobin as Gracchus,
Short, though not as fat as Bacchus,
Riding on a little jackass.”
Before saying good-bye to the donkey I must give the appeal of Mr.
Evarts’s little daughter at their summer home in Windsor, Vermont, to
her learned and judicial father; so naïve and irresistible:
“DEAR PAPA: Do come home soon. The donkey is so lonesome without
you!”
I once heard Mr. Evarts lamenting to Chief-Justice Chase that he had
been badly beaten at a game of High Low Jack by Ben, the learned pig. “I
know now,” said he, “why two pipes are called a hog’s head. It is on
account of their great capacity!”
One would fancy that a busy lawyer would have no time to give to pets,
but this is far from true. Burnet, in his life of Sir Matthew Hale, the
most eminent lawyer in the time of Charles I and Cromwell, says of him,
that “his mercifulness extended even to his beasts, for when the horses
that he had kept long grew old, he would not suffer them to be sold or
much wrought, but ordered his man to turn them loose on his grounds and
put them only to easy work, such as going to market and the like. He
used old dogs also with the same care; his shepherd having one that was
blind with age, he intended to have killed or lost him, but the judge
coming to hear of it made one of his servants bring him home and feed
him till he died. And he was scarce ever seen more angry than with one
of his servants for neglecting a bird that he kept so that it died for
want of food.”
Daniel Webster’s fondness for animals is well known. When his friends
visited him at Marshfield the first excursion they must take would be to
his barns and pastures, where he would point out the beauties of an
Alderney, and mention the number of quarts she gave daily, with all a
farmer’s pride, adding, “I know, for I measured it myself.” Choate used
to tell a story _à propos_ of this. Once, when spending the Sabbath at
Marshfield, he went to his room after breakfast to read. Soon there came
an authoritative knock at the door, and Mr. Webster shouted, “What are
you doing, Choate?” He replied, “I’m reading.” “Oh,” said Webster, “come
down and see the pigs.”
He would often rout up his son Fletcher at a provokingly early hour to
go out and hold a lantern while he fed the oxen with nubs of corn; and,
noticing a decided lack of enthusiasm in Fletcher, would say: “You do
not enjoy this society, my son; it’s better than I find in the Senate.”
It was a touching scene when on the last day, when he sat in his loved
library, he longed to look once more into the kindly faces of his honest
oxen, and had them driven up to the window to say good-bye. Speaking of
Choate recalls a comical story about his finding in his path, during a
summer morning’s walk, a dozen or more dorbeetles sprawling on their
backs in the highway enjoying the warm sunshine. With great care he
tipped them all over into a normal position, when a friend coming along
asked curiously, “What are you doing, Mr. Choate?” “Why, these poor
creatures got overturned, and I am helping them to take a fresh start.”
“But,” said the other, “they do that on purpose; they are sunning
themselves, and will go right back as they were.” This was a new idea to
the puzzled pleader, but with one of those rare smiles which lit up his
sad, dark face so wonderfully, he said: “Never mind, I’ve put them
right; if they go back, it is at their own risk.” And an interesting
anecdote is told in his biography of his touch of human sympathy for
inanimate objects: “When as a boy he drove his father’s cows, he says,
more than once when he had thrown away his switch, he has returned to
find it, and has carried it back and thrown it under the tree from which
he took it, for he thought, ‘Perhaps there is, after all, some yearning
of Nature between them still.’”
There are enough anecdotes about birds as pets to fill another big book.
One of Dickens’s most delightful characters was ponderous, impetuous
Lawrence Boythorn, with his pet bird lovingly circling about him. In
Washington, in Salmon P. Chase’s home, when he was Secretary of the
Treasury, lived a pet canary, one of the tamest, which had a special
liking for the grave, reserved statesman. It was allowed to fly about
the room freely, and had an invariable habit of calmly waiting beside
the secretary at dinner until he had used his finger-bowl; then Master
Canary would take possession of it for a bath. In Jean Paul Richter’s
study stood a table with a cage of canaries. Between this and his
writing table ran a little ladder, on which the birds could hop their
way to the poet’s shoulder, where they frequently perched.
Celia Thaxter loved birds. She writes: “I can not express to you my
distress at the destruction of the birds. You know how I love them;
every other poem I have written has some bird for its subject, and I
look at the ghastly horror of women’s headgear with absolute suffering.
I remonstrate with every wearer of birds. No woman worthy of the name
would wish to be instrumental in destroying the dear, beautiful
creatures, and for such idle folly—to deck their heads like squaws—who
are supposed to know no better—when a ribbon or a flower would serve
their purpose just as well, and not involve this fearful sacrifice.” In
a letter she describes a night visit from birds.
“Two or three of the earlier were down in the big bay window, and
between two and three o’clock in the morning it began softly to rain,
and all at once the room filled with birds: song sparrows, flycatchers,
wrens, nuthatches, yellow birds, thrushes, all kinds of lovely feathered
creatures fluttered in and sat on picture frames and gas fixtures, or
whirled, agitated, in mid air, while troops of others beat their heads
against the glass outside, vainly striving to get in. The light seemed
to attract them as it does the moths. We had no peace, there was such a
crowd, such cries and chirps and flutterings. I never heard of such a
thing; did you?
“Oh, the birds! I do believe few people enjoy them as you and I do. The
song sparrows and white-throats follow after me like chickens when they
see me planting. The martins almost light on my head; the humming birds
_do_, and tangle their little claws in my hair; so do the sparrows. I
wish somebody were here to tell me the different birds, and recognise
these different voices. There are more birds than usual this year, I am
happy to say. The women have not assassinated them all for the funeral
pyres they carry on their heads.... What between the shrikes and owls
and cats and weasels and women—worst of all—I wonder there’s a bird left
on this planet.
“In the yard of the house at Newton, where we used to live, I was in the
habit of fastening bones (from cooked meat) to a cherry tree which grew
close to my sitting-room window; and when the snow lay thick upon the
ground that tree would be alive with blue jays and chickadees, and
woodpeckers, red-headed and others, and sparrows (not English), and
various other delightful creatures. I was never tired watching them and
listening to them. The sweet housekeeping of the martins in the little
boxes on my piazza roof is more enchanting to me than the most
fascinating opera, and I worship music. I think I must have begun a
conscious existence as some kind of a bird in æons past. I love them so!
I am always up at four, and I hear everything every bird has to say on
any subject whatever. Tell me, have you ever tied mutton and beef bones
to the trees immediately around the house where you live for the birds?”
Matthew Arnold wrote of his canary and cat in a most loving way.
POOR MATTHIAS.
Poor Matthias! Found him lying
Fallen beneath his perch and dying?
Found him stiff, you say, though warm,
All convulsed his little form?
Poor canary, many a year
Well he knew his mistress dear;
Now in vain you call his name,
Vainly raise his rigid frame.
Vainly warm him in your heart,
Vainly kiss his golden crest,
Smooth his ruffled plumage fine,
Touch his trembling beak with wine.
One more gasp, it is the end,
Dead and mute our tiny friend.
Poor Matthias, wouldst thou have
More than pity? Claim’st a stave?
Friends more near us than a bird
We dismissed without a word.
Rover with the good brown head,
Great Attossa, they are dead;
Dead, and neither prose nor rhyme
Tells the praises of their prime.
· · · · ·
Thou hast seen Attossa sage
Sit for hours beside thy cage;
Thou wouldst chirp, thou foolish bird,
Flutter, chirp, she never stirred.
What were now these toys to her?
Down she sank amid her fur;
Eyed thee with a soul resigned,
And thou deemedst cats were kind.
Cruel, but composed and bland,
Dumb, inscrutable and grand,
So Tiberius might have sat
Had Tiberius been a cat.
Fare thee well, companion dear,
Fare forever well, nor fear,
Tiny though thou art, to stray
Down the uncompanioned way.
We without thee, little friend,
Many years have yet to spend;
What are left will hardly be
Better than we spent with thee.
Maclise was one of the intimate associates, if we may use the
expression, of Dickens’s celebrated Raven. The letter in which the
bereaved owners announced to Maclise the death of this interesting bird
has been published, but the reply of the artist is now printed for the
first time:
“_March 13, 1841._
“MY DEAR DICKENS: I received the mournful intelligence of our
friend’s decease last night at eleven, and the shock was great
indeed. I have just dispatched the announcement to poor Forster, who
will, I am sure, sympathize deeply with our bereavement.
“I know not what to think is the probable cause of his death—I
reject the idea of the Butcher Boy, for the orders he must have in
his (the Raven’s) lifetime received on acct. of the Raven himself
must have been considerable—I rather cling to the notion of _felo de
se_, but this will no doubt come out upon the post mortem. How blest
we are to have such an intelligent coroner in Mr. Wakely! I think he
was just of those grave, melancholic habits which are the noticeable
signs of your intended suicide—his solitary life—those gloomy tones,
when he did speak—which was always to the purpose, witness his last
dying speech—‘Hallo, old girl!’ which breathes of cheerfulness and
triumphant resignation—his solemn suit of raven black which never
grew rusty—altogether his character was the very prototype of a
Byron Hero and even of a Scott—a master of Ravenswood——We ought to
be glad he had his family, I suppose; he seems to have intended it,
however, for his solicitude to deposit in those Banks in the Garden
his savings, were always very touching—I suppose his obsequies will
take place immediately—It is beautiful—the idea of his return soon
after death to the scene of his early youth and all his joyful
associations, to lie with kindred dusts amid his own ancestral
groves, after having come out and made such a noise in the world,
having clearly booked his place in that immortality coach driven by
Dickens.
“Yes, he committed suicide, he felt he had done it and done with
life—the hundreds of years!! What were they to him? There was
nothing near to live for—and he committed the rash act.
“Sympathizingly yours,
“D. MACLISE.”
The pet dove of Thurlow Weed seemed inconsolable after his death. When
any gentleman called at the house the bird would alight on his shoulder,
coo, and peer into his face. Then finding it was not his dear friend, he
would sadly seek some other perch. Miss Weed writes: “Since the day that
father’s remains were carried away, the affectionate creature has been
seeking for his master. He flies through every room in the house, and
fairly haunts the library. Many times every day the mourning bird comes
and takes a survey of the room. He will tread over every inch of space
on the lounge, and then go to the rug, over which he will walk
repeatedly, as if in expectation of his dead master’s coming. Does not
this seem akin to human grief?”
Whittier wrote a good deal about his pet parrot. Read his poem called
“The Bird’s Question.” After his tragic end, the Quaker bard wrote of
him: “I have met with a real loss. Poor Charlie is dead. He has gone
where the good parrots go. He has been ailing and silent for some time,
and he finally died. Do not laugh at me, but I am sorry enough to cry if
it would do any good. He was an old friend. Lizzie liked him. And he was
the heartiest, jolliest, pleasantest old fellow I ever saw.” He used to
perch upon the back of his master’s chair at meal time; at times
disgracefully profane, especially when in moments of extreme excitement
he would climb to the steeple by way of the lightning rod, and there he
would dance and sing and swear on a Sunday morning, amusing the
passer-by and shocking his owner. At last he fell down the chimney, and
was not discovered for two days. He was rescued in the middle of the
night, and, although he partially recovered, he soon died. Whittier
said: “We buried poor Charlie decently. If there is a parrot’s paradise
he ought to go there.” He also had a pet Bantam rooster which would
perch on his shoulder, and liked to be buttoned up in his coat. Grace
Greenwood in Heads or Tails speaks of a diplomatic parrot belonging to
Seward, at Washington, taking part in political discussion, trying to
scream Sumner down, and so sympathetic that when his master had a cough
he had symptoms of bronchitis.
In a trustworthy collection of epitaphs may be found this quaint tribute
with old-fashioned formality to a pet bird:
“Here lieth, aged three months, the body of Richard Acanthus, a young
person of unblemished character. He was taken in his callow infancy from
the wing of a tender parent by the rough and pitiless hand of a
two-legged animal without feathers.
“Though born with the most aspiring disposition and unbending love of
freedom he was closely confined in a grated prison, and scarcely
permitted to view those fields of which he had an undoubted charter.
“Deeply sensible of this infringement of his natural rights, he was
often heard to petition for redress in the most plaintive notes of
harmonious sorrow. At length his imprisoned soul burst the prison which
his body could not, and left a lifeless heap of beauteous feathers.
“If suffering innocence can hope for retribution, deny not to the gentle
shade of this unfortunate captive the humble though uncertain hope of
animating some happier form; or trying his new-fledged pinions in some
happy Elysium, beyond the reach of MAN, the tyrant of this lower world.”
Few women are so fond of pets as Sarah Bernhardt. She carries five or
six with her in all her travels. When in New York the French actress has
apartments at the Hoffman House. When the writer last visited her there
he was received, upon entering the sitting room, by half a dozen dogs,
ranging in size and species from the massive St. Bernard to the tiny,
shivering black and tan.
The actress rose from a low divan and extended one hand to her guest
while she pressed two very small snakes to her bosom with the other.
After she had resumed her seat upon the divan, and while conversing, she
fondled the snakes or allowed them to squirm at will over her person.
In reply to questions, Madame Bernhardt said that the snakes were used
in the famous scene where Cleopatra presses the asp to her bosom and
dies. The actress explained that the snakes with which she was playing
were presented to her by a gentleman in Philadelphia. She spoke
regretfully of the death of the snakes which she had brought with her
from France, and which had succumbed to the hardships of the ocean
voyage.
Emily Crawford tells some good stories about “The Elder Dumas,” the most
dashingly picturesque character, surely, in the whole range of
literature. We quote a paragraph showing Dumas’s fondness for animals:
“At his architectural folly of Monte Cristo, near Saint-Germain-en-Laye,
which he built at a cost of upward of seven hundred thousand francs, and
sold for thirty-six thousand francs in 1848, Dumas had uninclosed
grounds and gardens, which, with the house, afforded lodgings and
entertainment not only to a host of Bohemian ‘sponges,’ but to all the
dogs, cats, and donkeys that chose to quarter themselves in the place.
It was called by the neighbours ‘_la Maison de Bon Dieu_.’ There was a
menagerie in the park, peopled by three apes; Jugurtha, the vulture,
whose transport from Africa, whence Dumas fetched him, cost forty
thousand francs (it would be too long to tell why); a big parrot called
Duval; a macaw named Papa, and another christened Everard; Lucullus, the
golden pheasant; Cæsar, the game-cock; a pea-fowl and a guinea-fowl;
Myeouf II, the Angora cat, and the Scotch pointer, Pritchard. This dog
was a character. He was fond of canine society, and used to sit in the
road looking out for other dogs to invite them to keep him company at
Monte Cristo. He was taken by his master to Ham to visit Louis Napoleon
when a prisoner there. The latter wished to keep Pritchard, but counted
without the intelligence of the animal in asking Dumas before his face
to leave him behind. The pointer set up a howl so piteous that the
governor of the prison withdrew the authorization he had given his
captive to retain him.”
It is difficult to think of any created thing that has not been found
sufficiently interesting to be petted by some one!
Pliny tells us of a cow that followed a Pythagorean philosopher on all
his travels. Proud Wolsey was on familiar terms with a venerable carp.
St. Anthony had a fondness for pigs. Frank Buckland took to rats.
Buffon’s toad has become historical. Clive owned a pet tortoise. Gautier
wrote of his lizards, magpie, and chameleon. Butterflies and crickets
have been domesticated and found responsive. Rosa Bonheur used to be
always escorted by two great dogs, one on either side, while in her home
a favourite monkey played upon her staircase, and amused visitors with
its gambols and pranks. Cowper doffed his melancholy to play with hares,
and immortalized his rather ungrateful pensioners in verse:
Well—one at least is safe. One sheltered hare
Has never heard the sanguinary yell
Of cruel man, exulting in her woes,
Innocent partner of my peaceful home,
Whom ten long years’ experience of my care
Has made at last familiar; she has lost
Much of her vigilant instinctive dread,
Not needful here, beneath a roof like mine.
Yes—thou mayst eat thy bread, and lick the hand
That feeds thee; thou mayst frolic on the floor
At ev’ning, and at night retire secure
To thy straw couch, and slumber unalarmed;
For I have gained thy confidence, have pledged
All that is human in me, to protect
Thine unsuspecting gratitude and love.
If I survive thee, I will dig thy grave;
And, when I place thee in it, sighing say,
I knew at least one hare that had a friend.
James M. Hoppin, in his Old England, tells of his visit to Olney, where
Cowper lived. He went to the rooms where he kept his hares, Puss, Bess,
and Tiny; of the veteran survivor of this famous trio he says Cowper
wrote:
Though duly from my hand he took
His pittance every night,
He did it with a jealous look,
And when he could, would bite.
Dr. John Hall was seen trudging through Central Park last winter,
followed by a troop of frisky little gay squirrels. He had been feeding
nuts to them, and they scattered the snow in clouds as they scampered
along hoping to get more.
It would be interesting to quote from very many distinguished persons
who believe in the immortality of the lower animals.
Lord Shaftesbury says: “I have ever believed in a happy future for
animals. I can not say or conjecture how or where, but sure I am that
the love so manifested, by dogs especially, is an emanation from the
Divine essence, and as such it can, or rather it will, never be
extinguished.”
Frances Power Cobbe wrote: “I entirely believe in a higher existence
hereafter, both for myself and for those whose less happy lives on earth
entitle them far more to expect it, from eternal love and justice.”
Mr. Somerville said: “The dear animals I believe we shall meet. They
suffer so often here they must live again! Pain seems a poor proof of
immortality, but it is used by theologians, and we find many great souls
who believe and hope that animals may also have another life. Agassiz
believed in this firmly. Bishop Butler saw no reason why the latent
powers and capacities of the lower animals should not be developed in
the future, and in his Analogy of Religion he endeavoured to carry out
this train of thought, and to show that the lower animals do possess
those mental and moral characteristics which we admit in ourselves to
belong to the immortal spirit and not to the perishable body.”
The Rev. J. G. Wood has written a most interesting book on Man and
Beast: Here and Hereafter, with the especial aim of proving the
immortality of the brute creation, showing that they share with man the
attributes of reason, language, memory, a sense of moral responsibility,
unselfishness, and love, all of which belong to the spirit and not to
the body.
Bayard Taylor says, “If one should surmise a lower form of spiritual
being yet equally indestructible, who need take alarm?” “Yea, they have
all one breath, so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast, for
all is vanity,” said the Preacher, more than two thousand years ago. In
Taylor’s poem to an old horse, Ben Equus, which died on the farm when he
was a young man, he uses the same idea:
For I may dream fidelity like thine,
May save some essence in thee from decay,
That, not neglected by the Soul Divine,
Thy being rises on some unknown way.
Some intermediate heaven, where fields are fresh,
And golden stables littered deep with fern;
Where fade the wrongs that horses knew in flesh,
And all the joys that horses felt return.
Mrs. Charles writes:
Is all this lost in nothingness,
Such gladness, love, and hope, and trust,
Such busy thought our thoughts to guess,
All trampled into common dust?
Or is there something yet to come
From all our science all concealed,
About the patient creatures dumb
A secret yet to be revealed?
Writing of the death of a favourite spaniel, Southey expresses the same
faith:
... Mine is no narrow creed,
And he that gave thee being did not frame
The mystery of life to be the sport
Of merciless man. There is another world
For all that live and move—a better one,
Where the proud bipeds who would fain confine
Infinite Goodness to the little bounds
Of their own charity, may envy thee.
Mrs. Mary Somerville wrote these words at the age of eighty-nine: “If
animals have no future, the existence of many is most wretched.
Multitudes are starved, cruelly beaten, and loaded during life; many die
under a barbarous vivisection. I can not believe that any creature was
created for uncompensated misery; it would be contrary to the attributes
of God’s mercy and justice. I am sincerely happy to find that I am not
the only believer in the immortality of the lower animals.” Lamartine
has the same thought in an address to his dog, and many other wise men
have hoped that such a future was a reality.
The Rev. Henry Storrs says it is wisest to treat animals kindly,
because, if we are ever to meet them again, it will be pleasanter to
have them on our side.
Henry Ward Beecher many times owned his love for horses, as in his one
novel, Norwood:
“I tell you,” said Hiram, turning slightly toward the doctor, “these
horses are jest as near human as is good for ’em. A good horse has sense
jest as much as a man has; and he’s proud, too, and he loves to be
praised, and he knows when you treat him with respect. A good horse has
the best p’ints of a man without his failin’s.”
“What do you think becomes of horses, Hiram, when they die?” said Rose.
“Wal, Miss Rose, it’s my opinion that there’s use for horses hereafter,
and that you’ll find there’s a horse-heaven. There’s Scripture for that,
too.”
“Ah!” said Rose, a little surprised at these confident assertions. “What
Scripture do you mean?”
“Why, in the Book of Revelation! Don’t it give an account of a white
horse, and a red horse, and black horses, and gray horses? I’ve allers
s’posed that when it said Death rode on a pale horse, it must have been
gray, ’cause it had mentioned white once already. In the ninth chapter,
too, it says there was an army of two hundred thousand horsemen. Now, I
should like to know where they got so many horses in heaven, if none of
’em that die off here go there? It’s my opinion that a good horse’s a
darned sight likelier to go to heaven than a bad man!”
When we see the superiority of a noble horse to his brutal or drunken
driver, it seems at least possible, and most of us have lost some pet
that we would rather meet again than the majority of our acquaintances.
Helen Barron Bostwick, after “burying her pretty brown mare under the
cherry tree,” inquires:
Is this the end?
Do you know?
and closes her poem as follows:
Is there aught of harm believing,
That, some newer form receiving,
They may find a wider sphere,
Live a larger life than here?
That the meek, appealing eyes,
Haunted by strange mysteries,
Find a more extended field,
To new destinies unsealed;
Or, that in the ripened prime
Of some far-off summer time,
Ranging that unknown domain,
We may find our pets again.
Sir Edwin Arnold has translated much that is touching about those who
are devoted to animals. A sinful woman led out to die by stoning was
pardoned by the king, because of her pity, even at that terrible crisis,
for a dying dog:
Glaring upon the water out of reach,
And praying succor in a silent speech,
So piteous were its eyes which, when she saw,
This woman from her foot her shoe did draw,
Albeit death-sorrowful, and looping up
The long silk of her girdle, made a cup
Of the heel’s hollow, and thus let it sink
Until it touched the cool, black water’s brink,
So filled the embroidered shoe and gave a draught
To the spent beast.
This brute beast
Testifies for thee, sister! whose weak breast
Death could not make ungentle. I hold rule
In Allah’s stead, who is the merciful,
And hope for mercy; therefore go thou free—
I dare not show less pity unto thee!
We send missionaries to the East to teach those who in some respects are
well fitted by their pure lives, exalted aims, and mercy toward the
brute creation to instruct us. How exquisite the story of the man who
would not enter heaven and leave his dog behind!
But the king answered: “O thou Wisest One,
Who knowest what was, and is, and is to be,
Still one more grace: this hound hath ate with me,
Followed me, loved me: must I leave him now?”
“Monarch,” spake Indra, “thou art now as we—
Deathless, divine—thou art become a god;
Glory and power and gifts celestial,
And all the joys of heaven are thine for aye.
What hath a beast with these? Leave here thy hound.”
Yet Yudhishthira answered: “O Most High,
O thousand-eyed and wisest; can it be
That one exalted should seem pitiless?
Nay, let me lose such glory: for its sake
I would not leave one living thing I loved.”
Then sternly Indra spake: “He is unclean,
And into Swarga such shall enter not.
The Krodhavasha’s hand destroys the fruits
Of sacrifice, if dogs defile the fire.
Bethink thee, Dharmaraj, quit now this beast;
That which is seemly is not hard of heart.”
Still he replied: “’Tis written that to spurn
A suppliant equals in offence to slay
A twice-born; wherefore, not for Swarga’s bliss
Quit I, Mahendra, this poor clinging dog.
So without any hope or friend save me,
So wistful, fawning for my faithfulness,
So agonized to die, unless I help
Who among men was called steadfast and just.”
Quoth Indra: “Nay, the altar flame is foul
Where a dog passeth; angry angels sweep
The ascending smoke aside, and all the fruits
Of offering, and the merit of the prayer
Of him whom a hound toucheth. Leave it here;
He that will enter heaven must enter pure.
Why didst thou quit thy brethren on the way,
And Krishna, and the dear-loved Draupadi,
Attaining firm and glorious, to this mount
Through perfect deeds, to linger for a brute?
Hath Yudhishthira vanquished self, to melt
With one poor passion at the door of bliss?
Stay’st thou for this, who didst not stay for them—
Draupadi, Bhima?”
But the king yet spake:
“’Tis known that none can hurt or help the dead.
They, the delightful ones, who sank and died,
Following my footsteps, could not live again
Though I had turned, therefore I did not turn;
But could help profit, I had turned to help.
There be four sins, O Sakra, grievous sins:
The first is making suppliants despair,
The second is to slay a nursing wife,
The third is spoiling Brahmans’ goods by force,
The fourth is injuring an ancient friend.
These four I deem but equal to one sin,
If one, in coming forth from woe to weal,
Abandon any meanest comrade then.”
Straight as he spake, brightly great Indra smiled;
Vanished the hound, and in its stead stood there
The Lord of Death and Justice, Dharma’s self.
Sweet were the words that fell from those dread lips,
Precious the lovely praise: “O thou true king,
Thou that dost bring to harvest the true seed
Of Pandu’s righteousness; thou that hast ruth
As he before, on all which lives! O son,
I tried thee in the Dwaita wood, what time
They smote thy brothers, bringing water; then
Thou prayed’st for Nakula’s life, tender and just,
Not Bhima’s nor Arjuna’s, true to both,
To Madri as to Kunti, to both queens.
Hear thou my word: Because thou didst not mount
This car divine, lest the poor hound be shent
Who looked to thee—lo! there is none in heaven
Shall sit above thee, King Bharata’s son!
Enter thou now to the eternal joys,
Living and in thy form. Justice and love
Welcome thee, monarch; thou shalt throne with them.”
As a farmer and butter-maker I want to condense a dissertation on The
Intellectual Cow, taken from the London Spectator:
The writer resents the general impression that the cow is merely a food
machine, and proves that she never yet has had justice done to her
mental qualities, and is entitled to more respectful consideration.
Cows certainly possess decided individuality, and in every herd will be
found a master mind which leads and domineers over the rest or acts as
ringleader in mischief. They soon learn their own names, and will answer
to them, and seldom make mistakes as to their own stalls. They are also
undoubtedly influenced by affection, and will give down milk more freely
to a friend than to one who is brutal in his manner.
Moreover, they enjoy petting just as much as humans, and will greet with
delight those who bring offerings of potatoes or apple-parings or bits
of bread, or who will give their heads and necks the luxury of a good
rub.
Charles Dudley Warner, in Being a Boy, pays a glowing tribute to the
Martial Turkey:
“Perhaps it is not generally known that we get the idea of some of our
best military manœuvres from the turkey. The deploying of the skirmish
line in advance of an army is one of them. The drum major of our holiday
militia companies is copied exactly from the turkey gobbler: he has the
same splendid appearance, the same proud step, and the same martial
aspect. The gobbler does not lead his forces in the field, but goes
behind them, like the colonel of a regiment, so that he can see every
part of the line and direct its movements. This resemblance is one of
the most singular things in natural history. I like to watch the gobbler
manœuvring his forces in a grasshopper field. He throws out his company
of two dozen turkeys in a crescent-shaped skirmish line, the number
disposed at equal distances, while he walks majestically in the rear.
They advance rapidly, picking right and left, with military precision,
killing the foe and disposing of the dead bodies with the same peck.
Nobody has yet discovered how many grasshoppers a turkey will hold; but
he is very much like a boy at a Thanksgiving dinner—he keeps on eating
as long as the supplies last. The gobbler, in one of these raids, does
not condescend to grab a single grasshopper—at least, not while anybody
is watching him. But I suppose he makes up for it when his dignity can
not be injured by having spectators of his voracity; perhaps he falls
upon the grasshoppers when they are driven into a corner of the field.
But he is only fattening himself for destruction; like all greedy
persons, he comes to a bad end. And if the turkeys had any Sunday
school, they would be taught this.”
Josh Billings, in his Animile Statistix, proved that he had been a close
observer. He says in this comical medley:
“Kats are affectionate, they luv young chickens, sweet kream, and the
best place in front of the fireplace.
“Dogs are faithful; they will stick to a bone after everybody haz
deserted it.
“The ox knoweth hiz master’s krib, and that iz all he duz kno or care
about hiz master.
“Munkeys are imitatiff, but if they kan’t imitate some deviltry they
ain’t happy.
“The goose is like all other phools—alwuss seems anxious to prove it.
“Ducks are only cunning about one thing: they lay their eggs in sitch
sly places that sumtimes they kan’t find them again themselfs.
“The mushrat kan foresee a hard winter and provide for it, but he kan’t
keep from gittin ketched in the sylliest kind ov a trap.
“Hens know when it is a going to rain, and shelter themselfs, but they
will try to hatch out a glass egg just az honest az they will one ov
their own.
“The cuckcoo iz the greatest ekonemist among the birds, she lays her
eggs in other birds’ nests, and lets them hatch them out at their
leizure.
“Rats hav fewer friends and more enemies than anything ov the
four-legged purswashun on the face ov the earth, and yet rats are az
plenty now az in the palmyest days ov the Roman Empire.
“The horse alwuss gits up from the ground on his fore legs first, the
kow on her hind ones, and the dog turns round 3 times before he lies
down.
“The kangaroo he jumps when he walks, the coon paces when he trots, the
lobster travels backwards az fast az he does forward.
“The elephant has the least, and the rabbit the most eye for their size,
and a rat’s tale is just the length ov hiz boddy.”
The very latest item of interest to dog-lovers is the announcement that
Bismarck has purchased a two-pound King Charles spaniel from the dog
show in Boston.
My collection is now as complete as the limitations of time and the
publishers will allow. As proprietor, I beg leave to announce my
Literary Zoo as now open at all hours (for a moderate fee) to those
interested in what we call, with conceit and possibly ignorance, the
inferior orders of creation, and the dumb brutes.
THE END.
D. APPLETON & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS.
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_THE WATTER’S MOU’._ By BRAM STOKER. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.
“Here is a tale to stir the most sluggish nature.... It is like
standing on the deck of a wave-tossed ship; you feel the soul of the
storm go into your blood.”—_New York Home Journal._
_MASTER AND MAN._ By COUNT LEO TOLSTOY. With an Introduction by W. D.
HOWELLS. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.
“Crowded with these characteristic touches which mark his literary
work.”—_Public Opinion._
“Reveals a wonderful knowledge of the workings of the human mind,
and it tells a tale that not only stirs the emotions, but gives us a
better insight into our own hearts.”—_San Francisco Argonaut._
_THE ZEIT-GEIST._ By L. DOUGALL, author of “The Mermaid,” “Beggars
All,” etc. 16mo. Cloth, 75 cents.
“One of the best of the short stories of the day.”—_Boston Journal._
“One of the most remarkable novels of the year.”—_New York
Commercial Advertiser._
“Powerful in conception, treatment, and influence.”—_Boston Globe._
_THE ONE WHO LOOKED ON._ By F. F. MONTRÉSOR, author of “Into the
Highways and Hedges.” 16mo. Cloth, special binding, $1.25.
“The story runs on as smoothly as a brook through lowlands; it
excites your interest at the beginning and keeps it to the
end.”—_New York Herald._
“An exquisite story.... No person sensitive to the influence of what
makes for the true, the lovely, and the strong in human friendship
and the real in life’s work can read this book without being
benefited by it.”—_Buffalo Commercial._
“The book has universal interest and very unusual merit.... Aside
from its subtle poetic charm, the book is a noble example of the
power of keen observation.”—_Boston Herald._
_CORRUPTION._ By PERCY WHITE, author of “Mr. Bailey-Martin,” etc.
12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
“There is intrigue enough in it for those who love a story of the
ordinary kind, and the political part is perhaps more attractive in
its sparkle and variety of incident than the real thing
itself.”—_London Daily News._
“A drama of biting intensity, a tragedy of inflexible purpose and
relentless result.”—_Pall Mall Gazette._
_A HARD WOMAN._ A Story in Scenes. By VIOLET HUNT. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
“An extremely clever work. Miss Hunt probably writes dialogue better
than any of our young novelists.... Not only are her conversations
wonderfully vivacious and sustained, but she contrives to assign to
each of her characters a distinct mode of speech, so that the reader
easily identifies them, and can follow the conversations without the
slightest difficulty.”—_London Athenæum._
“One of the best writers of dialogue of our immediate day. The
conversations in this book will enhance her already secure
reputation.”—_London Daily Chronicle._
_AN IMAGINATIVE MAN._ By ROBERT S. HICHENS, author of “The Green
Carnation,” etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.25.
“One of the brightest books of the year.”—_Boston Budget._
“Altogether delightful, fascinating, unusual.”—_Cleveland Amusement
Gazette._
“A study in character.... Just as entertaining as though it were the
conventional story of love and marriage. The clever hand of the
author of ‘The Green Carnation’ is easily detected in the caustic
wit and pointed epigram.”—_Jeannette L. Gilder, in the New York
World._
TWO REMARKABLE AMERICAN NOVELS.
_THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE. An Episode of the American Civil War._ By
STEPHEN CRANE. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00.
“Mr. Stephen Crane is a great artist, with something new to say, and
consequently with a new way of saying it.... In ‘The Red Badge of
Courage’ Mr. Crane has surely contrived a masterpiece.... He has
painted a picture that challenges comparison with the most vivid
scenes of Tolstoy’s ‘La Guerre et la Paix’ or of Zola’s ‘La
Débácle.’”—_London New Review._
“In its whole range of literature we can call to mind nothing so
searching in its analysis, so manifestly impressed with the stamp of
truth, as ‘The Red Badge of Courage.’... A remarkable study of the
average mind under stress of battle.... We repeat, a really fine
achievement.”—_London Daily Chronicle._
“Not merely a remarkable book: it is a revelation.... One feels
that, with perhaps one or two exceptions, all previous descriptions
of modern warfare have been the merest abstractions.”—_St. James
Gazette._
“Holds one irrevocably. There is no possibility of resistance when
once you are in its grip, from the first of the march of the troops
to the closing scenes.... Mr. Crane, we repeat, has written a
remarkable book. His insight and his power of realization amount to
genius.”—_Pall Mall Gazette._
_IN DEFIANCE OF THE KING. A Romance of the American Revolution._ By
CHAUNCEY C. HOTCHKISS. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
“The whole story is so completely absorbing that you will sit far
into the night to finish it. You lay it aside with the feeling that
you have seen a gloriously true picture of the Revolution.”—_Boston
Herald._
“The story is a strong one—a thrilling one. It causes the true
American to flush with excitement, to devour chapter after chapter
until the eyes smart; and it fairly smokes with patriotism.”—_N. Y.
Mail and Express._
“The heart beats quickly, and we feel ourselves taking part in the
scenes described.... Altogether the book is an addition to American
literature.”—_Chicago Evening Post._
“One of the most readable novels of the year.... As a love romance
it is charming, while it is filled with thrilling adventure and
deeds of patriotic daring.”—_Boston Advertiser._
“This romance seems to come the nearest to a satisfactory treatment
in fiction of the Revolutionary period that we have yet
had.”—_Buffalo Courier._
“A clean, wholesome story, full of romance and interesting
adventure.... Holds the interest alike by the thread of the story
and by the incidents.... A remarkably well-balanced and absorbing
novel.”—_Milwaukee Journal._
GILBERT PARKER’S BEST BOOKS.
_THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY._ Being the Memoirs of Captain ROBERT MORAY,
sometime an Officer in the Virginia Regiment, and afterward of
Amherst’s Regiment. 12mo. Cloth, illustrated, $1.50.
For the time of his story Mr. Parker has chosen the most absorbing
period of the romantic eighteenth-century history of Quebec. The
curtain rises soon after General Braddock’s defeat in Virginia, and
the hero, a prisoner in Quebec, curiously entangled in the intrigues
of La Pompadour, becomes a part of a strange history, full of
adventure and the stress of peril, which culminates only after
Wolfe’s victory over Montcalm. The material offered by the life and
history of old Quebec has never been utilized for the purposes of
fiction with the command of plot and incident, the mastery of local
color, and the splendid realization of dramatic situations shown in
this distinguished and moving romance. The illustrations preserve
the atmosphere of the text, for they present the famous buildings,
gates, and battle-grounds as they appeared at the time of the hero’s
imprisonment in Quebec.
_THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD._ A Novel. l2mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth,
$1.00.
“Mr. Parker here adds to a reputation already wide, and anew
demonstrates his power of pictorial portrayal and of strong dramatic
situation and climax.”—_Philadelphia Bulletin._
“The tale holds the reader’s interest from first to last, for it is
full of fire and spirit, abounding in incident, and marked by good
character-drawing.”—_Pittsburg Times._
_THE TRESPASSER._ 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
“Interest, pith, force, and charm—Mr. Parker’s new story possesses
all these qualities.... Almost bare of synthetical decoration, his
paragraphs are stirring because they are real. We read at times—as
we have read the great masters of romance—breathlessly.”—_The
Critic._
“Gilbert Parker writes a strong novel, but thus far this is his
masterpiece.... It is one of the great novels of the year.”—_Boston
Advertiser._
_THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE._ 16mo. Flexible cloth, 75 cents.
“A book which no one will be satisfied to put down until the end has
been matter of certainty and assurance.”—_The Nation._
“A story of remarkable interest, originality, and ingenuity of
construction.”—_Boston Home Journal._
New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
4. Enclosed bold font in =equals=.
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