The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-10-08


| cumscribed. where there exist among
the creatures no other relations than
! those of executioners and victims, eat
4 ers and eaten, where nothing is able to
| leave its steel-bound sphere, where
death alone established cruel re-
latiOns of cause and effect between
neighboring lives, where not the small
est sympathy has ever made a con-
scious leap from one species to another,
one animal alone, among all that
breathes upon the earth, has succeed
ed in breaking through the prophetic
circle in escaping from itself to come
bounding toward US, definitely to cross
the enormous zone of darkness, ice and
silence that isolates each category of
existence in natures unintelligible
plan. This animal, our good familiar
dog, simple and unsurprising as may
today appear to US what he has done,
in thus perceptibly drawing nearer to
a world in which he was not born and
for which he was not destined, has new
ertheless performed one of the most
unusual and improbable acts that we
can find in the general history of life.
So far as human annals stretch
he is at our side as at present.
We have not to gain his confidence or
his friendship: he is born our friend
. But the word friend does not
exactly depict his affectionate wor-
ship. He is, before all, our crea-
ture, full of gratitude and more devo-
ted than the apple of our eye. He is
our intimate and impassionaed slave,
whom nothing discourages, whom
nothing repels, whose ardent trust and
solved, in an admirable and touching
manner the terrifying problem which
human wisdom would have to solve If
a divine race came to occupy our
globe. He has loyalty, religiously and
irrevocably recognized mans superb
ority and has surrendered himself to
him body and soul reserving of his
independence, his instinct and his char
10 RI i7d a.
BILE to the continuation of the life
prescribed by nature. With an I'M
questionable certainty, an uncon-
straint and a simplicity that surprise
us a little deeming US better and more
powerful than all that exists he be-
trays, for our benefit, the whole of the
animal kingdom to. which he belongs
and, without scruple, denies his race,
his kin, his mother and his young"
". AS we know nothing or
the substance of things we must needs
cling to appearances; and 1T is sweet
to establish that, at least in appear
like unacknowledged kings we live in
solitary state, a betting that loves US
all"
world a pre-eminent position. enviable
among US. He is the only living be-
ing that has found and recognizes an
tangible, unexceptionable
and definite god. He knows to what
knows to whom above to give him
self. He has not to seek for a perfect,
superior and infinite power In the
darkness amid successive lies, hypo-
theses and dreams. That power is be- |
fore him and he moves in its light. |
He knows the supreme duties which
we do not know. He has morality
which surpasses all that he is able to
discover in himself and which he can
practice without scruple and without
fear. He possesses truth in its fullness.
He has a certain and infinite ideal"
=" And 1t was thus that the
other day I saw my little Pei
leas sitting at the foot of my writing
ia BILE his tail carefully folded under his
paws, his head a little on one side, the
better to question me, at once attentive
and TRANQUIL as a saint should be in |
the presence of God. He was happy |
with the happiness which we, perhaps, |
shall never know since it sprang from
the smile and the approval of life in |
higher than his own |
And when I saw him thus, young, ar |
dent and believing, bringing me In some
wise from the depths of an unWearled |
nature, quite fresh news of life, and |
trusting and wonderstruck as though |
he had been the first of his race :.
and as though we were still In the |
anvied the gladness of his certainty, |
it with the destiny of man,
still plunging on every side into dark
ness, and said to myself that the dog
who meets with good master is the /
happier of the two"
Our Friend the Dog by Maurice
Published by Dodd, Mead
&. Co, New York. Price $1.00. Through
zercner Book company, Topeka.
Herbert S. Stone & Co. have just
made the interesting announcement
hat Richard P. Greaves, author of
'Brewster's Millions" is really George
Barr McCutcheon, author of the two
'Graustark'' romances. The secret has
1een astonishingly we'll kept, partly, be-
yond a doubt, because of the absolute
differences in plot and style between
he book under the Greaves name and
he volumes originally stamped by NC
Cutcheon. "Brewster's Millions" will be
remembered as the whimsical story of
he young man who had to spend a
great fortune in a year in order to in
lerit a greater one. 1t was an absolute
novelty and a notable success.