A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs Part 3

Perhaps the event which gave him the greatest pleasure was a casual meeting with little Miss Moucher in a green omnibus coming from the top of Baker Street to Trafalgar Square. It could not possibly have been anybody else. There were the same large head and face, the same short arms. "Throat she had none; waist she had none; legs she had none, worth mentioning." The Boy can still hear the pattering of the rain on the rattly windows of that lumbering green omnibus; he can remember every detail of the impressive drive; and Miss Moucher, and the fact of her existence in the flesh, and there present, wiped from his mind every trace of Mme. Tussaud's famous gallery, and the waxworks it contained.

This was the Book of The Boy's Boyhood. He does not recommend it as the exclusive literature of their boyhood to other boys; but out of it The Boy knows that he got nothing but what was healthful and helping. It taught him to abominate selfish brutality and sneaking falsehood, as they were exhibited in the Murdstones and the Heeps; it taught him to keep Charles I., and other fads, out of his "Memorials"; it taught him to avoid rash expenditure as it was practised by the Micawbers; it showed him that a man like Steerforth might be the best of good fellows and at the same time the worst and most dangerous of companions; it showed, on the other hand, that true friends like Traddles are worth having and worth keeping; it introduced him to the devoted, sisterly affection of a woman like Agnes; and it proved to him that the rough pea-jacket of a man like Ham Peggotty might cover the simple heart of as honest a gentleman as ever lived.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BOY'S FATHER]

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 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!"

FOUR DOGS

WHISKIE

AN EAU DE VIE

In 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.

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 d.y.k.e 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHISKIE]

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 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, pa.s.sing 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 s.e.x. 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 pa.s.s.

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 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!

[Ill.u.s.tration: PUNCH]

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 bas.e.m.e.nt. Here, for hours, he would look out at the pa.s.sers-by--indulging 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 a.s.sisted 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 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 sc.r.a.p of blue-gray wool. And here it is:

"Punch Hutton is ready to vow and declare That 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 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 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, pa.s.sing 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 birth and his evident breeding ent.i.tle him,"

was the friend's remark, and Mop regretfully went back to his stall.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOP AND HIS MASTER]

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 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 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 pa.s.sengers, 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 not a.s.sert 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 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.