Page:My last friend, dog Dick (IA mylastfrienddogd00deam).pdf/31

Rh drill-grounds, with their harmless rifles on their shoulders, to save Italy. When he winds himself up like a ball, with his mouth toward the South Pole, showing nothing but a half-closed eye, that keeps track of me in all my movements around the room, he recalls to my mind some elderly people wrapped up and sitting by the side of the fire watching, with half an eye, their grand-children, in whom they see the intention of playing a joke.

And isn't it an image of that comic but pitiful spectacle, the imbecility of a man who bursts out and threatens injuries to himself after he has made a blunder, when Dick runs around in a circle, growling, and biting his tail as if it were the appendix of one of his enemies!

And when he stands up on his hind legs like a puppet which has been set up,—omitting his dignity as a quadruped without foreseeing the laughter which he will arouse,—to reach for a piece of cake that is held high over his head,—is he giving any different idea of the cringing ambitions that shame his dignity as a biped who throws himself like a quadruped before the influential personages who show him the ribbon of a cross!