Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1891-09-14
His Fruitless Trips in Search of His
Unfortunate Master.

HIS FultIeBb III StaFCh oI HE
Unfortunate Master.
[From the San Francisco CALL
Day and night for nearly three months
the patrol wagon from the central police
station has been followed by ragged,
hungry, homeless cur dog that answers to
the strictly appropriate name of Bum.
Still at the same time his canine heart is
capable of loving devotion entirely un-
known to the human bum.
His chief object in life is to keep the pa
trol-wagon in sight. Day and night he
turks in the generous shadows of the
morgue or behind the garbage tanks in
Dunbar alley with his bleary, purblind
eyes blinkings at the blue drunk chariot.
Sometimes during his lonely vigils in the
night Bum falls into fitful doze, but at
the first clang of the gong or the clatter
of the horses hoofs as they clear the alley
he is up and away on his hopeless mission.
The dog first made his appearance at the
prison about three months ago, when his
master, George Doney, a worthless charac-
ter, was brought in from Broadway lodg-
ing g-house.
For long time Mr.. Doney had been sus-
pected of doing nothing for living, and
one day the police caught him at it. So
he was promptly rounded up and sent to
the house of correction for six months.
The last the dog saw of his master was
when he was hauled out of the wagon at
the door of the prison. Since then the
faithful brute has never allowed the wag-
on to leave his presence for more than two
minutes at a time. In his befuddled mind
Mr.. Doney and the drunk chariot are rela-
ted in some mysterious manner, and the
poor, forsaken beast lie living in the for
lorn hope that by following the wagon he
may find the only friend he has on earth.
If the dog holds out until Doney serves
his sentence his cherished dream may yet
be realized.
Bum is short of wind and tail and can
not see more than halfway across the
street, but his. physical infrmities are
nothing to his mental torture when he
finds each succeeding trip with the wagon
as fruitless as the last. There is pathet-
ic tinge of almost human grief in the
whine of disappointment he utters when.
on shifting at the heels, of the limp and
lifeless drunk as he is loaded into the wag
on, he finds that he has made another trip
for nothing.
Sometimes during a night run Bum loses
the wagon, owing to his failing sight, but
Driver Murphy hits the gong whack, and
moment later the painting brute comes
bounding forward with mingled yelp of
hope and gladness.
OF late Matron Karr of the Receiving
hospital, has taken kindly interest in
BUNS case, and in the morning she places
the scraps of meat left over from making
beef-tea under one end of the doorstep.
At the same hour every morning Bum
makes dull gray streak of himself from
the wagon to breakfast, but so intense is
his anxiety regarding the movements of
the police department that he bolts his
victuals whole on the return trip.
He holds aloof from others of his kind,
and even refuses the advances of dogs of
higher caste and better breeding with
bright brass collars on, allowing no sordid
aims or worldly pleasures to interfere with
his object in life. He will have nothing to
do with men, either civilians or police
men, and has given ample evidence that
old, dirty, worthless, shiftless, drunken
Doney is the only man he ever loved