What I discovered was a man at once shy and proud, who had tendered his immense genius to the care of a pack of dogs. His own manner with his pets was that of lord and master. A dog pleasing to him would earn a scratch behind an ear. A dog who spoke without being spoken to could earn a thump of the man's pipe on the cranium. But the dogs roaming the sixteenth of an acre of fenced-in grass by the Flatiron Building can't read.
People say it was a vision of moral perfection so stringent that it brooked no compromise.
He lives by the master's convenience. Left alone for long periods to fend for himself, Nothing to drink, not a scrap in the bowl. Parasites, ear mites, worms in the flesh. The rapier teeth of a hundred invaders Have left their marks, and the old whiskered maw Is white with the years. The left brown eye, the malformed other perpetually weeps.