Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/308

 my voice would waver ominously, and I should forfeit the dignities befitting even this decay by still playing childish games of belief with some foolish dog. I would be a village "character" of the sort that is justly said to "dodder." And the judicious would shun observation by me, or, if it befell them, would affect an intense preoccupation lest I halt and dodder to them of a past unromantically barren.

There were moments in which I made no doubt of all this. But I fought them off as foolishly as did Jim his own intervals of clear seeing. Sometimes in a half doze he breathes a long, almost human sigh of perfect and despairing comprehension, as if the whole dead weight of his race's history flashed upon him; as if the woful failure of his species to achieve anything worth while, and the daily futilities of himself as an individual dog were suddenly revealed. In such instants he knows, perhaps, that there is little reward in being a dog, unless you cheat yourself by believing more than the facts warrant. But presently he is up to dash at a bird, with a fine forgetfulness, quite as startled by the trick of flight as in his first days. And I, envying him his gift of credulity, weakly strive for it.

As I have said, I had noted that in these free dreamings of mine the painted face above my neighbor's mantel seemed to have had a place long before I looked upon its actual lines. This perplexed me not a little; that the face should seem to have been