Page:Under the Sun.djvu/269

Rh eye upon the scene. The envy of the dog has given rise to the well-known fable of the dog in the manger; and the story told in “False Beasts and True” (in illustration of canine sagacity) exemplifies this trait in a striking way. Leo was a large and lawless dog, belonging to an establishment where lived also a mild Maltese terrier. The latter, however, fed daintily, and was clad in fine linen, whereas Leo got as many rough words as bones, and was not allowed in the pretty rooms of which the terrier was a favored inmate. From the reports furnished of the judicial inquiry which followed the crime, it seems that the lesser (very much lesser) dog had been missed for several days, and his absence bewailed, while something in the demeanor of the big dog suggested to all beholders that some terrible tragedy had occurred and that Leo was darkly privy thereto. A length a servant going to the coal-hole heard a feeble moaning proceeding from the farthest corner, and on investigating with a candle, the Maltese terrier was found buried under lumps of coal. The supposition was that Leo had carried his diminutive rival to the coal-hole, and there scratched down an avalanche of coals upon him; and the manners of the two dogs when confronted bore striking evidence to the truth of the theory. Of Leo’s envy there can hardly therefore be a suspicion.

Gluttony is common to all dogs, but their general aversion to drunkenness is supposed, by their partial eulogists, to be demonstrated by the fact attested by the Rev. F. Jackson of a dog who, having been once made so drunk with malt liquor that he could not get upstairs without help, always growled and snarled at the sight of a pewter pot! To establish in a feeble way this