Page:Under the Sun.djvu/270

246 dislike of malt liquor, the eulogist, it seems to me, has trifled away the dog’s intelligence altogether. Nor, as illustrating sagacity, is the following anecdote so very forcible at it might be. Begum was a small red cocker who, with a very strange perception of her own importance, engaged as her attendant a mild Pomeranian of her own sex, who having only three available legs, displayed the gentler manners of a confirmed invalid. Begum, several times in her long and respected career, became the joyful mother of puppies, and on all these interesting occasions her friend Rip (or Mrs. Gamp, as she came to be called) presided over her nursery, kept beside the mother in her temporary seclusion, exhibited the little strangers to visitors with all the mother’s pride during her absences, and in short, behaved herself like a devoted friend. “Strange to say,” says the author, “when the poor nurse herself was dying, and Begum was brought to her bedside to cheer her, the sagacious cocker snuffed her friend, and then leaping gaily over her postrateprostrate [sic], gasping form, left the stable for a frolic, and never looked in again on her faithful attendant.” This narrative, however, hardly illustrates the remarkable gratitude which may be almost said to be a dog’s leading principle.

Regret and grief dogs no doubt share also with men, for my own terrier when he stands with sadly oscillating tail and his head stuck through the area railings, whimpering for “the touch of a vanished cat” and “the sound of a puss that is still,” bears ample testimony to the former; nor when, out ferreting, the rabbit has mysteriously disappeared into an impassable earth, is there any room for hesitation as to Tim’s grief. His regret at the rabbit’s evasive habits is unmistakable. Mrs.