Page:My last friend, dog Dick (IA mylastfrienddogd00deam).pdf/18

10 and then added: "and he is a dog without good blood. How much did you pay for him?"

"Thirty cents," I answered. "Not worth it," he said laughingly.

O my poor Dick! "Ugly looking! mongrel!" and not valued at thirty cents!

I felt a great compassion for you and I loved you from that moment because you really had been insulted when I recognized in you one whom Nature had disinherited, and I thought that nowhere else in the world outside of my house would you find good luck.

"Ugly!" "mongrel!" "Paid too much at the price of one pound of meat!" And from that time you appeared to me beautiful,—and of blood as pure as that of the Narcissi of your race, to whom the gold medal is always awarded in the expositions,—and from the very day, overcoming the repulsion of the first days, I began to take you in my arms and press you to my heart, and feel with pleasure in the palm of my hand and on my face, the cool humidity of your little black mouth.

And how quickly you rendered me a recompense! To think that in fifty years I had never enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing a dog on the