Page:My last friend, dog Dick (IA mylastfrienddogd00deam).pdf/14

6 plain of its loneliness, and immediately responded to our caresses with demonstrations of affection.

He made us feel from the first that he surely would become for us, not only a pleasant distraction, but a companion and a comforter, and in time no matter how much care we had given him, if we should count up the debts of reciprocal gratitude, he would surely be the creditor.

Yes, dear Dick, you are not any more a dog for us. You are a friend. And you are just the one that we really needed for our house, a friend that does not talk nor laugh.

Never mind me. I am only talking to myself. You can sleep on.

Among the many debts of gratitude which I owe him is this special one, that he caused me to discontinue an injustice. I was unjust to all his kind; not because I hated it, but because I never loved it. I had never had a dog. I did not know anything about dogs except what I had learned from conversations with my friends or from the pages of some writer.

The marvels and tenderness of which I had heard or read I did not believe to be anything more than flowers of fantasy.

No, I could not have imagined that a dog