The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-20
THE DOG IN FICTION.
Canine Nature Made Study By Some
 of the Greatest Writers.

From the Philadelphia North American. In one important respect, the dog might be regarded as one of the pitfalls of literature, especially modern literature. l For dog nature is harder to understand | than human nature, and many a writer who imagineS that he knows enough 1 about dogs to place his knowledge be-
 l tween deathless covers is really erecting a monument to his own ignorance.
 l People who do know dogs are often l possessed of feeling of irritation when | they see the false situations in which those best friends of manor second best. at any rate-often find themselves after. the story teller is through with them
 That the barking dog never bites is well-known to every school child and yet in the hands of the ordinary story writer the dog that barks is far more dangerous than the one which is permit ted to keep silent. For the silent one cannot hold the author up to ridicule, which the dog that is permitted-or com | peiled-to indulge in human-l1e noises almost always does.
 Compared with the impossible dog 1 stories which frequently crop out in con l temporaneous periodicals and books, l there is to be found real refreshment in | one of those simple, but truthful, old-time | stories like 'Rab and His Friends" This | is just a logical, effective story of
 natural things that a dog of unusual in- l teligence may do and does; not of things 1 which, were they done by man, would | be considered miraculous.
 | John Burroughs and other leading naturalists withhold the gift of reasoning l from dogs, and yet some story writers would have us believe that in reasoning l qualities dogs may be much more ad- 1 vanced than a highly educated human | being.
 | Of much more complex nature than l "Rab and His Friends" and much more alluring, even though more open to criti- | cism, is Jack London's Gall of the | Wild" This is the fantastic decidedly | novel story of one of those great wolf | like sledge dogs of the Arctic country and i! the wonderful deeds which, acted amid l such picturesque surroundings, must of course charm and astound the dweller | in civilization.
 | But spectacular as MT. London made
 I the doings of his first great dog charac- I ter, in a later book, White Fang he | far outdid his first efforts.
 | Even those critics who could good i naturedly pass over the inaccuracies in ! the first could not help chiding when the second appeared. And yet Mir Londons | dog characters will undoubtedly survive i for many a day in modern English lit | erature as the strongest, most fascn- ating work that has been done along that | line.
 In his story of White Fang" Mr. Lon | don told of the dogs eventful career | from his babyhood in the forest down to his second childhood, at which late | time in life he made him indulge in such | innocent recreation as demolishing rum away convicts.
 not used as the principal character, but as sort of cogwheel in the mechanism. l Such is ''The Hound of the Baskervilles," l." | by Sir A. Conan Doyle.
 A sort of terrific hybrid of mastiff | and bloodhound was this creature. and | the nearest that the creator of "Sher- | lock Holmes" came to describing his size | was to say that he was s'as large as small lioness."
 | Taken from his happy home and sent | abroad in the bogs of Dartmoor to do
 i baronet to death. this dog made fearful | the very atmosphere, and the reader across the ocean had no difficulty in l catching a strong whiff Of the same fear | laden air.
 | A monstrous dog. and yet accepted by many of Sir A Conan's admirers as one | of the best characters he ever created. In "The Garden of Allah" it was a small dog that sounded the first note of | distrust of the recreant priest in his new | refuge. So in many another book has the author taken advantage of this sixth sense in the dog-although naturalists | dispute the existence of such a sense | to more rapidly unfold their plots. Dogs as ghosts seers have been made use Of by writers, and as scent sniffers they have done yoeman service Every one knows what an important part the giant dogs played in Uncle Toms 1 Cabin'
 Charles G. D. Roberts and Seton Thomp- son have had their fling with dog char acters, and produced stories that have found great favor with American readers. Mark Twain knows, perhaps, as much about dog nature as any living author. and presents his knowledge with quaint ] touches of humor.