The Boy, in his time, has been brought in contact
with many famous men and women; but upon nothing
in his whole experience does he look back now
with greater satisfaction than upon his slight intercourse
with the first great man he ever knew. Quite
a little lad, he was staying at the Pulaski House in
Savannah, in 1853—perhaps it was in 1855—when
[p 57]
his father told him to observe particularly the old
gentleman with the spectacles, who occupied a seat
at their table in the public dining-room; for, he said,
the time would come when The Boy would be very
proud to say that he had breakfasted, and dined, and
supped with Mr. Thackeray. He had no idea who,
or what, Mr. Thackeray was; but his father considered
him a great man, and that was enough for
The Boy. He did pay particular attention to Mr.
Thackeray, with his eyes and his ears; and one
morning Mr. Thackeray paid a little attention to
him, of which he is proud, indeed. Mr. Thackeray
took The Boy between his knees, and asked his
name, and what he intended to be when he grew up.
He replied, “A farmer, sir.” Why, he cannot imagine,
for he never had the slightest inclination
towards a farmer’s life. And then Mr. Thackeray
put his gentle hand upon The Boy’s little red head,
and said: “Whatever you are, try to be a good one.”
To have been blessed by Thackeray is a distinction The Boy would not exchange for any niche in the Temple of Literary Fame; no laurel crown he could ever receive would be able to obliterate, or to equal, the sense of Thackeray’s touch; and if there be any virtue in the laying on of hands The Boy can only hope that a little of it has descended upon him.
And whatever The Boy is, he has tried, for Thackeray’s sake, “to be a good one!”
[p 59]
FOUR DOGS
[p 60]
WHISKIE
AN EAU DE VIEIn doggerel lines, Whiskie my dog I sing.These lines are after Virgil, Pope, or some one.His very voice has got a Whiskie Ring.I call him Whiskie, ’cause he’s such a rum one.
His is a high-whine, and his nip has power,Hot-Scotch his temper, but no Punch is merrier;Not Rye, not Schnappish, he’s no Whiskie-Sour.I call him Whiskie—he’s a Whis-Skye terrier.
[p 61]
FOUR DOGS
It was Dr. John Brown, of Edinboro’, who once spoke in sincere sympathy of the man who “led a dog-less life.” It was Mr. “Josh Billings” who said that in the whole history of the world there is but one thing that money cannot buy, to wit: the wag of a dog’s tail. And it was Professor 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.
The Boy has been the friend and confidant of
Four Dogs who have helped to humanize him for a
quarter of a century and more, and who have souls
to be saved, he is sure. And when he crosses the
Stygian River he expects to find, on the other shore,
a trio of dogs wagging their tails almost off, in their
joy at his coming, and with honest tongues hanging
out to lick his hands and his feet. And then he is
[p 62]
going, with these faithful, devoted dogs at his heels,
to talk about dogs with Dr. John Brown, Sir Edwin
Landseer, and Mr. “Josh Billings.”
The first dog, Whiskie, was an alleged Skye terrier, coming, alas! from a clouded, not a clear, sky. He had the most beautiful and the most perfect head ever seen on a dog, but his legs were altogether too long; and the rest of him, was—just dog. He came into the family in 1867 or 1868. He was, at the beginning, not popular with the seniors; but he was so honest, so ingenuous, so “square,” that he made himself irresistible, and he soon became even dearer to the father and to the mother than he was to The Boy. Whiskie was not an amiable character, except to his own people. He hated everybody else, he barked at everybody else, and sometimes he bit everybody else—friends of the household as well as the butcher-boys, the baker-boys, and the borrowers of money who came to the door. He had no discrimination in his likes and dislikes, and, naturally, he was not popular, except among his own people. He hated all cats but his own cat, by whom he was bullied in a most outrageous way. Whiskie had the sense of shame and the sense of humor.
One warm summer evening, the family was sitting
on the front steps, after a refreshing shower of rain,
when Whiskie saw a cat in the street, picking its
dainty way among the little puddles of water. With
[p 63]
a muttered curse he dashed after the cat without
discovering, until within a few feet of it, that it was
the cat who belonged to him. He tried to stop himself
in his impetuous career, he put on all his brakes,
literally skimming along the street railway-track as
if he were out simply for a slide, passing the cat, who
gave him a half-contemptuous, half-pitying look; and
then, after inspecting the sky to see if the rain was
really over and how the wind was, he came back to
his place between the father and The Boy as if it
were all a matter of course and of every-day occurrence.
But he knew they were laughing at him;
and if ever a dog felt sheepish, and looked sheepish—if
ever a dog said, “What an idiot I’ve made of
myself!” Whiskie was that dog.
The cat was a martinet in her way, and she demanded all the privileges of her sex. Whiskie always gave her precedence, and once when he, for a moment, forgot himself and started to go out of the dining-room door before her, she deliberately slapped him in the face; whereupon he drew back instantly, like the gentleman he was, and waited for her to pass.
Whiskie was fourteen or fifteen years of age in
1882, when the mother went to join the father, and
The Boy was taken to Spain by a good aunt and
cousins. Whiskie was left at home to keep house
with the two old servants who had known him all his
[p 64]
life, and were in perfect sympathy with him. He had
often been left alone before during the family’s frequent
journeyings about the world, the entire establishment
being kept running purely on his account.
Usually he did not mind the solitude; he was well
taken care of in their absence, and he felt that they
were coming back some day. This time he knew it
was different. He would not be consoled. He wandered
listlessly and uselessly about the house; into
the mother’s room, into his master’s room; and one
morning he was found in a dark closet, where he had
never gone before, dead—of a broken heart.
He had only a stump of a tail, but he will wag it—when next his master sees him!
The second dog was Punch—a perfect, thorough-bred
Dandie Dinmont, and the most intelligent, if
not the most affectionate, of the lot. Punch and
The Boy kept house together for a year or two, and
alone. The first thing in the morning, the last thing
at night, Punch was in evidence. He went to the
door to see his master safely off; he was sniffing at
the inside of the door the moment the key was heard
in the latch, no matter how late at night; and so long
as there was light enough he watched for his master
out of the window. Punch, too, had a cat—a son,
or a grandson, of Whiskie’s cat. Punch’s favorite
seat was in a chair in the front basement. Here, for
hours, he would look out at the passers-by—indulging
[p 65]
in the study of man, the proper study of his kind.
The chair was what is known as “cane-bottomed,”
and through its perforations the cat was fond of
tickling Punch, as he sat. When Punch felt that
the joke had been carried far enough, he would rise
in his wrath, chase the cat out into the kitchen,
around the back-yard, into the kitchen again, and
then, perhaps, have it out with the cat under the
sink—without the loss of a hair, the use of a claw,
or an angry spit or snarl. Punch and the cat slept
together, and dined together, in utter harmony; and
the master has often gone up to his own bed, after a
solitary cigar, and left them purring and snoring in
each other’s arms. They assisted at each other’s
toilets, washed each other’s faces, and once, when
Mary Cook was asked what was the matter with
Punch’s eye, she said: “I think, Sur, that the cat
must have put her finger in it, when she combed his
bang!”
Punch loved everybody. He seldom barked, he
never bit. He cared nothing for clothes, or style, or
social position. He was as cordial to a beggar as he
would have been to a king; and if thieves had come
to break through and steal, Punch, in his unfailing,
hospitable amiability, would have escorted them
through the house, and shown them where the
treasures were kept. All the children were fond of
Punch, who accepted mauling as never did dog
[p 66]
before. His master could carry him up-stairs by the
tail, without a murmur of anything but satisfaction
on Punch’s part; and one favorite performance of
theirs was an amateur representation of “Daniel in
the Lion’s Den,” Punch being all the animals, his
master, of course, being the prophet himself. The
struggle for victory was something awful. Daniel
seemed to be torn limb from limb, Punch, all the
time, roaring like a thousand beasts of the forest,
and treating his victim as tenderly as if he were
wooing a sucking dove. The entertainment—when
there were young persons at the house—was of
nightly occurrence, and always repeatedly encored.
Punch, however, never cared to play Lion to the
Daniel of anybody else.
One of Punch’s expressions of poetic affection is still preserved by a little girl who is now grown up, and has little girls of her own. It was attached to a Christmas-gift—a locket containing a scrap of blue-gray wool. And here it is:
“Punch Hutton is ready to vow and declareThat his friend Milly Barrett’s a brick.He begs she’ll accept of this lock of his hair;And he sends her his love—and a lick.”
Punch’s most memorable performance, perhaps,
was his appearance at a dinner-party of little ladies
and gentlemen. They were told that the chief dish
[p 67]
of the entertainment was one which they all particularly
liked, and their curiosity, naturally, was greatly
excited. The table was cleared, the carving-knife was
sharpened in a most demonstrative manner, and half
a dozen pairs of very wide-open little eyes were fixed
upon the door through which the waitress entered,
bearing aloft an enormous platter, upon which nothing
was visible but a cover of equally enormous size—both
of them borrowed, by-the-way, for the important
occasion. When the cover was raised, with all ceremony,
Punch was discovered, in a highly nervous
state, and apparently as much delighted and amused
at the situation as was anybody else. The guests,
with one voice, declared that he was “sweet enough
to eat.”
Punch died very suddenly; poisoned, it is supposed, by somebody whom he never injured. He never injured a living soul! And when Mary Cook dug a hole, by the side of Whiskie’s grave, one raw afternoon, and put Punch into it, his master is not ashamed to confess that he shut himself up in his room, threw himself onto the bed, and cried as he has not cried since they took his mother away from him.
Mop was the third of the quartet of dogs, and he
came into the household like the Quality of Mercy.
A night or two after the death of Punch, his master
chanced to be dining with the Coverleys, in
[p 68]
Brooklyn. Mr. Coverley, noticing the trappings and
the suits of woe which his friend wore in his face,
naturally asked the cause. He had in his stable a
Dandie as fine as Punch, whom he had not seen, or
thought of, for a month. Would the bereaved one
like to see him? The mourner would like to look at
any dog who looked like the companion who had
been taken from him; and a call, through a speaking-tube,
brought into the room, head over heels,
with all the wild impetuosity of his race, Punch personified,
his ghost embodied, his twin brother. The
same long, lithe body, the same short legs (the fore
legs shaped like a capital S), the same short tail, the
same hair dragging the ground, the same beautiful
head, the same wistful, expressive eye, the same cool,
insinuating nose. The new-comer raced around the
table, passing his owner unnoticed, and not a word
was spoken. Then this Dandie cut a sort of double
pigeon-wing, gave a short bark, put his crooked, dirty
little feet on the stranger’s knees, insinuated his cool
and expressive nose into an unresisting hand, and
wagged his stump of a tail with all his loving might.
It was the longed-for touch of a vanished paw, the
lick of a tongue that was still. He was unkempt,
uncombed, uncared for, but he was another Punch,
and he knew a friend when he saw one. “If that
were my dog he would not live forgotten in a stable:
he would take the place in the society to which his
[p 69]
birth and his evident breeding entitle him,” was the
friend’s remark, and Mop regretfully went back to
his stall.
The next morning, early, he came into the Thirty-fourth Street study, combed, kempt, shining, cared for to a superlative degree; with a note in his mouth signifying that his name was Mop and that he was The Boy’s. He was The Boy’s, and The Boy was his, so long as he lived, ten happy years for both of them.
Without Punch’s phenomenal intelligence, Mop had many of Punch’s ways, and all of Punch’s trust and affection; and, like Punch, he was never so superlatively happy as when he was roughly mauled and pulled about by his tail. When by chance he was shut out in the back-yard, he knocked, with his tail, on the door; he squirmed his way into the heart of Mary Cook in the first ten minutes, and in half an hour he was on terms of the most affectionate friendship with Punch’s cat.
Mop had absolutely no sense of fear or of animal
proportions. As a catter he was never equalled; a
Yale-man, by virtue of an honorary degree, he tackled
everything he ever met in the feline way—with
the exception of the Princeton Tiger—and he has
been known to attack dogs seven times as big as
himself. He learned nothing by experience: he never
knew when he was thrashed. The butcher’s dog at
[p 70]
Onteora whipped, and bit, and chewed him into semi-helpless
unconsciousness three times a week for four
months, one summer; and yet Mop, half paralyzed,
bandaged, soaked in Pond’s Extract, unable to hold
up his head to respond to the greetings of his own
family, speechless for hours, was up and about and
ready for another fray and another chewing, the
moment the butcher’s dog, unseen, unscented by the
rest of the household, appeared over the brow of the
hill.
The only creature by whom Mop was ever really overcome was a black-and-white, common, every-day, garden skunk. He treed this unexpected visitor on the wood-pile one famous moonlight night in Onteora. And he acknowledged his defeat at once, and like a man. He realized fully his own unsavory condition. He retired to a far corner of the small estate, and for a week, prompted only by his own instinct, he kept to the leeward of Onteora society.
He went out of Onteora, that summer, in a blaze
of pugnacious glory. It was the last day of the season;
many households were being broken up, and
four or five families were leaving the colony together.
All was confusion and hurry at the little
railway station at Tannersville. Scores of trunks
were being checked, scores of packages were being
labelled for expressage, every hand held a bag, or a
bundle, or both; and Mop, a semi-invalid, his fore paw
[p 71]
and his ear in slings, the result of recent encounters
with the butcher’s dog, was carried, for safety’s sake,
and for the sake of his own comfort, in a basket,
which served as an ambulance, and was carefully
placed in the lap of the cook. As the train finally
started, already ten minutes late, the cook, to give
her hero a last look at the Hill-of-the-Sky, opened the
basket, and the window, that he might wag a farewell
tail. When lo! the butcher’s dog appeared upon the
scene, and, in an instant, Mop was out of the window
and under the car-wheels, in the grip of the
butcher’s dog. Intense was the excitement. The engine
was stopped, and brakemen, and firemen, and
conductors, and passengers, and on-lookers, and other
dogs, were shouting and barking and trying to separate
the combatants. At the end of a second ten
minutes Mop—minus a piece of the other ear—was
back in his ambulance: conquered, but happy. He
never saw the butcher’s dog or Onteora again.
To go back a little. Mop was the first person who
was told of his master’s engagement, and he was the
first to greet the wife when she came home, a bride,
to his own house. He had been made to understand,
from the beginning, that she did not care for dogs—in
general. And he set himself out to please, and to
overcome the unspoken antagonism. He had a delicate
part to play, and he played it with a delicacy
and a tact which rarely have been equalled. He did
[p 72]
not assert himself; he kept himself in the background;
he said little; his approaches at first were
slight and almost imperceptible, but he was always
ready to do, or to help, in an unaggressive way. He
followed her about the house, up-stairs and down-stairs,
and he looked and waited. Then he began to
sit on the train of her gown; to stand as close to her
as was fit and proper; once in a while to jump upon
the sofa beside her, or into the easy-chair behind her,
winking at his master, from time to time, in his quiet
way.
And at last he was successful. One dreary winter, when he suffered terribly from inflammatory rheumatism, he found his mistress making a bed for him by the kitchen fire, getting up in the middle of the night to go down to look after him, when he uttered, in pain, the cries he could not help. And when a bottle of very rare old brandy, kept for some extraordinary occasion of festivity, was missing, the master was informed that it had been used in rubbing Mop!
Mop’s early personal history was never known.
Told once that he was the purest Dandie in America,
and asked his pedigree, his master was moved to look
into the matter of his family tree. It seems that a
certain sea-captain was commissioned to bring back
to this country the best Dandie to be had in all Scotland.
He sent his quartermaster to find him, and
[p 73]
the quartermaster found Mop under a private carriage,
in Argyle Street, Glasgow, and brought him
on board. That is Mop’s pedigree.
Mop died of old age and of a complication of diseases, in the spring of 1892. He lost his hair, he lost his teeth, he lost everything but his indomitable spirit; and when almost on the brink of the grave, he stood in the back-yard—literally, on the brink of his own grave—for eight hours in a March snow-storm, motionless, and watching a great black cat on the fence, whom he hypnotized, and who finally came down to be killed. The cat weighed more than Mop did, and was very gamy. And the encounter nearly cost a lawsuit.
This was Mop’s last public appearance. He retired
to his bed before the kitchen range, and
gradually and slowly he faded away: amiable, unrepining,
devoted to the end. A consultation of doctors
showed that his case was hopeless, and Mop was
condemned to be carried off to be killed humanely
by the society founded by Mr. Bergh, where without
cruelty they end the sufferings of animals. Mop had
not left his couch for weeks. His master spoke to
him about it, with tears in his eyes, one night. He
said: “To-morrow must end it, old friend. ’Tis
for your sake and your relief. It almost breaks my
heart, old friend. But there is another and a better
world—even for dogs, old friend. And for old
[p 74]
acquaintance’ sake, and for old friendship’s sake, I
must have you sent on ahead of me, old friend.”
The next morning, when he came down to breakfast, there by the empty chair sat Mop. How he got himself up the stairs nobody knows. But there he was, and the society which a good man founded saw not Mop that day.
The end came soon afterwards. And Mop has gone on to join Whiskie and Punch in their waiting for The Boy.
The family went abroad for a year’s stay, when Mop died, and they rented the house to good people and good tenants, who have never been forgiven for one particular act. They buried a dog of their own in the family plot in the back-yard, and under the ailantus-tree which shades the graves of the cats and the dogs; and The Boy feels that they have profaned the spot!
It seemed to his master, after the passing of Mop, that the master’s earthly account with dogs was closed. The pain of parting was too great to be endured. But another Dandie came to him, one Christmas morning, to fill the aching void; and for a time again his life is not a dogless one.
The present ruler of the household has a pedigree
much longer and much straighter than his own front
legs. Although he comes from a distinguished line of
prize-winning thoroughbreds, he never will be
[p 75]
permitted to compete for a medal on his own behalf.
The Dog Show should be suppressed by the Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dogs. It has ruined
the dispositions and broken the hearts of very many
of the best friends humanity ever had. And the
man who would send his dog to the Dog Show,
would send his wife to a Wife Show, and permit his
baby to be exhibited, in public, for a blue ribbon or a
certificate—at an admission-fee of fifty cents a head!
Mop’s successor answers to the name of Roy—when he answers to anything at all. He is young, very wilful, and a little hard of hearing, of which latter affliction he makes the most. He always understands when he is invited to go out. He is stone-deaf, invariably, when he is told to come back. But he is full of affection, and he has a keen sense of humor. In the face he looks like Thomas Carlyle, and Professor John Weir declares that his body is all out of drawing!
At times his devotion to his mistress is beautiful and touching. It is another case of “Mary and the Lamb, you know.” If his mistress is not visible, he waits patiently about; and he is sure to go wherever she goes. It makes the children of the neighborhood laugh and play. But it is severe upon the master, who does most of the training, while the mistress gets most of the devotion. That is the way with lambs, and with dogs, and with some folks!
[p 76]
Roy is quite as much of a fighter as was any one
of the other dogs; but he is a little more discriminating
in his likes and his dislikes. He fights
all the dogs in Tannersville; he fights the Drislers’
Gyp almost every time he meets him; he fights the
Beckwiths’ Blennie only when either one of them
trespasses on the domestic porch of the other (Blennie,
who is very pretty, looks like old portraits of
Mrs. Browning, with the curls hanging on each side
of the face); and Roy never fights Laddie Pruyn nor
Jack Ropes at all. Jack Ropes is the hero whom he
worships, the beau ideal to him of everything a dog
should be. He follows Jack in all respects; and he
pays Jack the sincere flattery of imitation. Jack, an
Irish setter, is a thorough gentleman in form, in action,
and in thought. Some years Roy’s senior, he
submits patiently to the playful capers of the younger
dog; and he even accepts little nips at his legs or his
ears. It is pleasant to watch the two friends during
an afternoon walk. Whatever Jack does, that does
Roy; and Jack knows it, and he gives Roy hard
things to do. He leads Roy to the summit of high
rocks, and then he jumps down, realizing that Roy is
too small to take the leap. But he always waits until
Roy, yelping with mortification, comes back by the
way they both went. He wades through puddles up
to his own knees, but over Roy’s head; and then he
trots cheerfully away, far in advance, while Roy has
[p 77]
to stop long enough to shake himself dry. But it was
Roy’s turn once! He traversed a long and not very
clean drain, which was just large enough to give free
passage to his own small body; and Jack went rushing
after. Jack got through; but he was a spectacle
to behold. And there are creditable eye-witnesses
who are ready to testify that Roy took Jack home,
and sat on the steps, and laughed, while Jack was
being washed.
Each laughed on the wrong side of his mouth, however—Jack from agony, and Roy from sympathy—when Jack, a little later, had his unfortunate adventure with the loose-quilled, fretful, Onteora porcupine. It nearly cost Jack his life and his reason; and for some time he was a helpless, suffering invalid. Doctors were called in, chloroform was administered, and many delicate surgical operations were performed before Jack was on his feet again; and for the while each tail drooped. Happily for Roy, he did not go to the top of the Hill-of-the-Sky that unlucky day, and so he escaped the porcupine. But Roy does not care much for porcupines, anyway, and he never did. Other dogs are porcupiney enough for him!
Roy’s association with Jack Ropes is a liberal education
to him in more ways than one. Jack is so big
and so strong and so brave, and so gentle withal, and
so refined in manners and intellectual in mind, that
Roy, even if he would, could not resist the healthful
[p 78]
influence. Jack never quarrels except when Roy
quarrels; and whether Roy is in the right or in the
wrong, the aggressor or the attacked (and generally
he begins it), Jack invariably interferes on Roy’s behalf,
in a good-natured, big-brother, what-a-bother
sort of way that will not permit Roy to be the under
dog in any fight. Part of Roy’s dislike of Blennie—Blennie
is short for Blenheim—consists in the fact
that while Blennie is nice enough in his way, it is not
Roy’s way. Blennie likes to sit on laps, to bark out
of windows—at a safe distance. He wears a little
sleigh-bell on his collar. Under no circumstances
does he play follow-my-leader, as Jack does. He does
not try to do stunts; and, above all, he does not care
to go in swimming.
The greatest event, perhaps, in Roy’s young life
was his first swim. He did not know he could swim.
He did not know what it was to swim. He had
never seen a sheet of water larger than a road-side
puddle or than the stationary wash-tubs of his own
laundry at home. He would have nothing to do
with the Pond, at first, except for drinking purposes;
and he would not enter the water until Jack went in,
and then nothing would induce him to come out of
the water—until Jack was tired. His surprise and
his pride at being able to take care of himself in an
entirely unknown and unexplored element were very
great. But—there is always a But in Roy’s case—but
[p 79]
when he swam ashore the trouble began. Jack,
in a truly Chesterfieldian manner, dried himself in
the long grass on the banks. Roy dried himself in
the deep yellow dust of the road—a medium which
was quicker and more effective, no doubt, but not so
pleasant for those about him; for he was so enthusiastic
over his performance that he jumped upon
everybody’s knickerbockers, or upon the skirts of
everybody’s gown, for the sake of a lick at somebody’s
hand and a pat of appreciation and applause.
Another startling and never-to-be-forgotten experience of Roy’s was his introduction to the partridge. He met the partridge casually one afternoon in the woods, and he paid no particular attention to it. He looked upon it as a plain barn-yard chicken a little out of place; but when the partridge whirled and whizzed and boomed itself into the air, Roy put all his feet together, and jumped, like a bucking horse, at the lowest estimate four times as high as his own head. He thought it was a porcupine! He had heard a great deal about porcupines, although he had never seen one; and he fancied that that was the way porcupines always went off!
Roy likes and picks blackberries—the green as
well as the ripe; and he does not mind having his
portrait painted. Mr. Beckwith considers Roy one
of the best models he ever had. Roy does not have
to be posed; he poses himself, willingly and patiently,
[p 80]
so long as he can pose himself very close to his
master; and he always places his front legs, which
he knows to be his strong point, in the immediate
foreground. He tries very hard to look pleasant, as
if he saw a chipmunk at the foot of a tree, or as if
he thought Mr. Beckwith was squeezing little worms
of white paint out of little tubes just for his amusement.
And if he really does see a chipmunk on a
stump, he rushes off to bark at the chipmunk; and
then he comes back and resumes his original position,
and waits for Mr. Beckwith to go on painting
again. Once in awhile, when he feels that Mr. Beckwith
has made a peculiarly happy remark, or an unusually
happy stroke of the brush, Roy applauds
tumultuously and loudly with his tail, against the
seat of the bench or the side of the house. Roy has
two distinct wags—the perpendicular and the horizontal;
and in his many moments of enthusiasm he
never neglects to use that particular wag which is
likely to make the most noise.
Roy has many tastes and feelings which are in entire
sympathy with those of his master. He cannot
get out of a hammock unless he falls out; and he
is never so miserable as when Mrs. Butts comes over
from the Eastkill Valley to clean house. Mrs. Butts
piles all the sitting-room furniture on the front piazza,
and then she scrubs the sitting-room floor, and
neither Roy nor his master, so long as Mrs. Butts
[p 81]
has control, can enter the sitting-room for a bone or
a book. And they do not like it, although they like
Mrs. Butts.
Roy has his faults; but his evil, as a rule, is
wrought by want of thought rather than by want of
heart. He shows his affection for his friends by
walking under their feet and getting his own feet
stepped on, or by sitting so close to their chairs that
they rock on his tail. He has been known to hold
two persons literally spellbound for minutes, with his
tail under the rocker of one chair and both ears under
the rocker of another one. Roy’s greatest faults are
barking at horses’ heels and running away. This
last is very serious, and often it is annoying; but
there is always some excuse for it. He generally
runs away to the Williamsons’, which is the summer
home of his John and his Sarah; and where lodges
Miss Flossie Burns, of Tannersville, his summer-girl.
He knows that the Williamsons themselves do not
want too much of him, no matter how John and
Sarah and Miss Burns may feel on the subject; and
he knows, too, that his own family wishes him to stay
more at home; but, for all that, he runs away. He
slips off at every opportunity. He pretends that
he is only going down to the road to see what time
it is, or that he is simply setting out for a blackberry
or the afternoon’s mail; and when he is brought reluctantly
home, he makes believe that he has
[p 82]
forgotten all about it; and he naps on the top step, or
in the door-way, in the most guileless and natural
manner; and then, when nobody is looking, he
dashes off, barking at any imaginary ox-cart, in wild,
unrestrainable impetuosity, generally in the direction
of the Williamsons’ cottage, and bringing up, almost
invariably, under the Williamsons’ kitchen stove.
He would rather be shut up, in the Williamsons’ kitchen, with John and Sarah, and with a chance of seeing Flossie through the wire-screened door, than roam in perfect freedom over all his own domain.
He will bark at horses’ heels until he is brought home, some day, with broken ribs. Nothing but hard experience teaches Roy. There is no use of boxing his ears. That only hurts his feelings, and gives him an extra craving for sympathy. He licks the hand that licks him, until everyone of the five fingers is heartily ashamed of itself.
“He pretends he has forgotten all about it” |
|
“He poses willingly and steadily” |
“He waits patiently about” |
Several autograph letters of Roy’s, in verse, in blank-verse, and in plain, hard prose, signed by his own mark—a fore paw dipped in an ink-bottle and stamped upon the paper—were sold by Mrs. Custer at varying prices during a fair for the benefit of the Onteora Chapel Fund, in 1896.
To one friend he wrote:
“My dear Blennie Beckwith,—You are a sneak; and a snip; and a snide; and a snob; and a snoozer; and a snarler; and a snapper; and a skunk. And I hate you; and I loathe you; [p 83]
and I despise you; and I abominate you; and I scorn you; and I repudiate you; and I abhor you; and I dislike you; and I eschew you; and I dash you; and I dare you.“Your affectionate friend,
“P. S.—I’ve licked this spot.
“R. H.
His Roy paw print Hutton. mark. “Witness: Kate Lynch.”
Inspired by Miss Flossie Williamson Burns’s bright eyes, he dropped into poetry in addressing her:
“Say I’m barkey; say I’m bad;Say the Thurber pony kicked me;Say I run away—but add—‘Flossie licked me.’
“Witness: Sarah Johnson.” his
“Roy × Hutton.
mark.
In honor of “John Ropes, Esquire,” he went to Shakspere:
To tell the secrets of thy mountain climb,I could a tail unfold, whose lightest wagWould harrow up the roof of thy mouth, draw thy young blood,Make thy two eyes, like a couple of safety-matches, start from their spheres;Thy knotted and combined locks to part right straight down the middle of thy back,And each particular brick-red hair to stand on endFull of quills, shot out by a fretful Onteora porcupine.But this eternal blazon must not beTo ears that are quite as handsome as is the rest of thy beautiful body.(“‘Hamlet,’ altered to suit, by)
“Witness: John Johnson.” his
“Roy × Hutton.
mark.
His latest poetical effort was the result of his affection for a Scottish collie, in his neighborhood, and was indited
TO LADDIE PRUYN, ESQ.
Should Auld Acquaintance be forgot,And the Dogs of Auld Lang Syne?I’ll wag a tail o’ kindness yet,For the sake of Auld Ladd Pruyn.Witnesses:
Marion Lyman,
Effie Waddington,
Katherine Lyman.
While Roy was visiting the Fitches and the Telford
children, and little Agnes Ogden, at Wilton,
Conn., some time afterwards, he dictated a long letter
to his master, some portions of which, perhaps,
[p 85]
are worth preserving. After the usual remarks upon
the weather and the general health of the family, he
touched upon serious, personal matters which had
evidently caused him some mental and physical uneasiness.
And he explained that while he was willing
to confess that he did chase the white cat into a
tree, and keep her away from her kittens for a couple
of hours, he did not kill the little chicken. The little
chicken, stepped upon by its own mother, was dead,
quite dead, when he picked it up, and brought it to
the house. And he made Dick Fitch, who was an
eye-witness to the whole transaction, add a post-script
testifying that the statement was true.
John says the letter sounds exactly like Roy!
Roy’s is a complex character. There is little medium
about Roy. He is very good when he is good,
and he is very horrid indeed when he is bad. He is
a strange admixture of absolute devotion and of utter
inconstancy. Nothing will entice him away
from John on one day, neither threats nor persuasion.
The next day he will cut John dead in the
road, with no sign of recognition. He sees John,
and he goes slowly and deliberately out of his way
to pass John by, without a look or a sniff. He comes
up-stairs every morning when his master’s shaving-water
is produced. He watches intently the entire
course of his master’s toilet; he follows his master,
step by step, from bed to bureau, from closet to
[p 86]
chair; he lies across his master’s feet; he minds no
sprinkling from his master’s sponge, so anxious is he
that his master shall not slip away, and go to his
breakfast without him. And then, before his master
is ready to start, Roy goes off to breakfast, alone—at
the Williamsons’! He will torment his master
sometimes for hours to be taken out to walk; he will
interrupt his master’s work, disturb his master’s afternoon
nap, and refuse all invitations to run away
for a walk on his own account. And the moment
he and his master have started, he will join the first
absolute stranger he meets, and walk off with that
stranger in the opposite direction, and in the most
confidential manner possible!
There are days when he will do everything he should do, everything he is told to do, everything he is wanted to do. There are days and days together when he does nothing that is right, when he is disobedient, disrespectful, disobliging, disagreeable, even disreputable. And all this on purpose!
It is hard to know what to do with Roy: how to
treat him; how to bring him up. He may improve
as he grows older. Perhaps to his unfortunate infirmity
may be ascribed his uncertainty and his variability
of temper and disposition. It is possible that
he cannot hear even when he wants to hear. It is
not impossible that he is making-believe all the time.
One great, good thing can be said for Roy: he is
[p 87]
never really cross; he never snaps; he never snarls;
he never bites his human friends, no matter how
great the provocation may be. Roy is a canine
enigma, the most eccentric of characters. His family
cannot determine whether he is a gump or a genius.
But they know he is nice; and they like him!
Long may Roy be spared to wag his earthly tail, and to bay deep-mouthed welcome to his own particular people as they draw near home. How the three dogs who have gone on ahead agree now with each other, and how they will agree with Roy, no man can say. They did not agree with very many dogs in this world. But that they are waiting together, all three of them, for Roy and for The Boy, and in perfect harmony, The Boy is absolutely sure.
MOP