A dog's tale

== A DOG'S TALE ==
=== By Mark Twain ===
Published in the St-Louis Globe 1899
Chapter I
My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a
Presbyterian. This is what my mother told me, I do not know these nice
distinctions myself. To me they are only fine large words meaning nothing. My
mother had a fondness for such; she liked to say them, and see other dogs look
surprised and envious, as wondering how she got so much education. But, indeed,
it was not real education; it was only show: she got the words by listening in
the dining-room and drawing-room when there was company, and by going with the
children to Sunday-school and listening there; and whenever she heard a large
word she said it over to herself many times, and so was able to keep it until
there was a dogmatic gathering in the neighborhood, then she would get it off,
and surprise and distress them all, from pocket-pup to mastiff, which rewarded
her for all her trouble. If there was a stranger he was nearly sure to be
suspicious, and when he got his breath again he would ask her what it meant.
And she always told him. He was never expecting this but thought he would catch
her; so when she told him, he was the one that looked ashamed, whereas he had
thought it was going to be she. The others were always waiting for this, and
glad of it and proud of her, for they knew what was going to happen, because
they had had experience. When she told the meaning of a big word they were all
so taken up with admiration that it never occurred to any dog to doubt if it
was the right one; and that was natural, because, for one thing, she answered
up so promptly that it seemed like a dictionary speaking, and for another
thing, where could they find out whether it was right or not? for she was the
only cultivated dog there was. By and by, when I was older, she brought home
the word Unintellectual, one time, and worked it pretty hard all the week at
different gatherings, making much unhappiness and despondency; and it was at
this time that I noticed that during that week she was asked for the meaning at
eight different assemblages, and flashed out a fresh definition every time,
which showed me that she had more presence of mind than culture, though I said
nothing, of course. She had one word which she always kept on hand, and ready,
like a life-preserver, a kind of emergency word to strap on when she was likely
to get washed overboard in a sudden way--that was the word Synonymous. When she
happened to fetch out a long word which had had its day weeks before and its
prepared meanings gone to her dump-pile, if there was a stranger there of
course it knocked him groggy for a couple of minutes, then he would come to,
and by that time she would be away down wind on another tack, and not expecting
anything; so when he'd hail and ask her to cash in, I (the only dog on the
inside of her game) could see her canvas flicker a moment --but only just a
moment--then it would belly out taut and full, and she would say, as calm as a
summer's day, "It's synonymous with supererogation," or some godless
long reptile of a word like that, and go placidly about and skim away on the
next tack, perfectly comfortable, you know, and leave that stranger looking
profane and embarrassed, and the initiated slatting the floor with their tails
in unison and their faces transfigured with a holy joy.
And it was the same with phrases. She would drag home a whole phrase, if
it had a grand sound, and play it six nights and two matinees, and explain it a
new way every time--which she had to, for all she cared for was the phrase; she
wasn't interested in what it meant, and knew those dogs hadn't wit enough to
catch her, anyway. Yes, she was a daisy! She got so she wasn't afraid of
anything, she had such confidence in the ignorance of those creatures. She even
brought anecdotes that she had heard the family and the dinner-guests laugh and
shout over; and as a rule she got the nub of one chestnut hitched onto another
chestnut, where, of course, it didn't fit and hadn't any point; and when she
delivered the nub she fell over and rolled on the floor and laughed and barked
in the most insane way, while I could see that she was wondering to herself why
it didn't seem as funny as it did when she first heard it. But no harm was
done; the others rolled and barked too, privately ashamed of themselves for not
seeing the point, and never suspecting that the fault was not with them and
there wasn't any to see.
You can see by these things that she was of a rather vain and frivolous
character; still, she had virtues, and enough to make up, I think. She had a
kind heart and gentle ways, and never harbored resentments for injuries done
her, but put them easily out of her mind and forgot them; and she taught her
children her kindly way, and from her we learned also to be brave and prompt in
time of danger, and not to run away, but face the peril that threatened friend
or stranger, and help him the best we could without stopping to think what the
cost might be to us. And she taught us not by words only, but by example, and
that is the best way and the surest and the most lasting. Why, the brave things
she did, the splendid things! she was just a soldier; and so modest about
it--well, you couldn't help admiring her, and you couldn't help imitating her;
not even a King Charles spaniel could remain entirely despicable in her
society. So, as you see, there was more to her than her education.
CHAPTER II
When I was well grown, at last, I was sold and taken away, and I never
saw her again. She was broken-hearted, and so was I, and we cried; but she
comforted me as well as she could, and said we were sent into this world for a
wise and good purpose, and must do our duties without repining, take our life
as we might find it, live it for the best good of others, and never mind about
the results; they were not our affair. She said men who did like this would
have a noble and beautiful reward by and by in another world, and although we
animals would not go there, to do well and right without reward would give to
our brief lives a worthiness and dignity which in itself would be a reward. She
had gathered these things from time to time when she had gone to the
Sunday-school with the children, and had laid them up in her memory more
carefully than she had done with those other words and phrases; and she had
studied them deeply, for her good and ours. One may see by this that she had a wise
and thoughtful head, for all there was so much lightness and vanity in it.
So we said our farewells, and looked our last upon each other through
our tears; and the last thing she said--keeping it for the last to make me
remember it the better, I think--was, "In memory of me, when there is a
time of danger to another do not think of yourself, think of your mother, and
do as she would do."
Do you think I could forget that? No.
CHAPTER III
It was such a charming home!--my new one; a fine great house, with
pictures, and delicate decorations, and rich furniture, and no gloom anywhere,
but all the wilderness of dainty colors lit up with flooding sunshine; and the
spacious grounds around it, and the great garden--oh, greensward, and noble
trees, and flowers, no end! And I was the same as a member of the family; and
they loved me, and petted me, and did not give me a new name, but called me by
my old one that was dear to me because my mother had given it me--Aileen
Mavoureen. She got it out of a song; and the Grays knew that song, and said it
was a beautiful name.
Mrs. Gray was thirty, and so sweet and so lovely, you cannot imagine it;
and Sadie was ten, and just like her mother, just a darling slender little copy
of her, with auburn tails down her back, and short frocks; and the baby was a
year old, and plump and dimpled, and fond of me, and never could get enough of
hauling on my tail, and hugging me, and laughing out its innocent happiness;
and Mr. Gray was thirty-eight, and tall and slender and handsome, a little bald
in front, alert, quick in his movements, business-like, prompt, decided,
unsentimental, and with that kind of trim-chiseled face that just seems to
glint and sparkle with frosty intellectuality! He was a renowned scientist. I
do not know what the word means, but my mother would know how to use it and get
effects. She would know how to depress a rat-terrier with it and make a lap-dog
look sorry he came. But that is not the best one; the best one was Laboratory.
My mother could organize a Trust on that one that would skin the tax-collars
off the whole herd. The laboratory was not a book, or a picture, or a place to
wash your hands in, as the college president's dog said--no, that is the
lavatory; the laboratory is quite different, and is filled with jars, and
bottles, and electrics, and wires, and strange machines; and every week other
scientists came there and sat in the place, and used the machines, and
discussed, and made what they called experiments and discoveries; and often I
came, too, and stood around and listened, and tried to learn, for the sake of
my mother, and in loving memory of her, although it was a pain to me, as
realizing what she was losing out of her life and I gaining nothing at all; for
try as I might, I was never able to make anything out of it at all.
Other times I lay on the floor in the mistress's work-room and slept,
she gently using me for a foot-stool, knowing it pleased me, for it was a
caress; other times I spent an hour in the nursery, and got well tousled and
made happy; other times I watched by the crib there, when the baby was asleep
and the nurse out for a few minutes on the baby's affairs; other times I romped
and raced through the grounds and the garden with Sadie till we were tired out,
then slumbered on the grass in the shade of a tree while she read her book;
other times I went visiting among the neighbor dogs--for there were some most
pleasant ones not far away, and one very handsome and courteous and graceful
one, a curly-haired Irish setter by the name of Robin Adair, who was a
Presbyterian like me, and belonged to the Scotch minister.
The servants in our house were all kind to me and were fond of me, and
so, as you see, mine was a pleasant life. There could not be a happier dog that
I was, nor a gratefuler one. I will say this for myself, for it is only the
truth: I tried in all ways to do well and right, and honor my mother's memory
and her teachings, and earn the happiness that had come to me, as best I could.
By and by came my little puppy, and then my cup was full, my happiness
was perfect. It was the dearest little waddling thing, and so smooth and soft
and velvety, and had such cunning little awkward paws, and such affectionate
eyes, and such a sweet and innocent face; and it made me so proud to see how
the children and their mother adored it, and fondled it, and exclaimed over
every little wonderful thing it did. It did seem to me that life was just too
lovely to--
Then came the winter. One day I was standing a watch in the nursery.
That is to say, I was asleep on the bed. The baby was asleep in the crib, which
was alongside the bed, on the side next the fireplace. It was the kind of crib
that has a lofty tent over it made of gauzy stuff that you can see through. The
nurse was out, and we two sleepers were alone. A spark from the wood-fire was
shot out, and it lit on the slope of the tent. I suppose a quiet interval
followed, then a scream from the baby awoke me, and there was that tent flaming
up toward the ceiling! Before I could think, I sprang to the floor in my
fright, and in a second was half-way to the door; but in the next half-second
my mother's farewell was sounding in my ears, and I was back on the bed again.,
I reached my head through the flames and dragged the baby out by the
waist-band, and tugged it along, and we fell to the floor together in a cloud
of smoke; I snatched a new hold, and dragged the screaming little creature
along and out at the door and around the bend of the hall, and was still
tugging away, all excited and happy and proud, when the master's voice shouted:
"Begone you cursed beast!" and I jumped to save myself; but he
was furiously quick, and chased me up, striking furiously at me with his cane,
I dodging this way and that, in terror, and at last a strong blow fell upon my
left foreleg, which made me shriek and fall, for the moment, helpless; the cane
went up for another blow, but never descended, for the nurse's voice rang
wildly out, "The nursery's on fire!" and the master rushed away in
that direction, and my other bones were saved.
The pain was cruel, but, no matter, I must not lose any time; he might
come back at any moment; so I limped on three legs to the other end of the
hall, where there was a dark little stairway leading up into a garret where old
boxes and such things were kept, as I had heard say, and where people seldom
went. I managed to climb up there, then I searched my way through the dark
among the piles of things, and hid in the secretest place I could find. It was
foolish to be afraid there, yet still I was; so afraid that I held in and
hardly even whimpered, though it would have been such a comfort to whimper,
because that eases the pain, you know. But I could lick my leg, and that did
some good.
For half an hour there was a commotion downstairs, and shoutings, and
rushing footsteps, and then there was quiet again. Quiet for some minutes, and
that was grateful to my spirit, for then my fears began to go down; and fears
are worse than pains--oh, much worse. Then came a sound that froze me. They
were calling me--calling me by name--hunting for me!
It was muffled by distance, but that could not take the terror out of
it, and it was the most dreadful sound to me that I had ever heard. It went all
about, everywhere, down there: along the halls, through all the rooms, in both
stories, and in the basement and the cellar; then outside, and farther and
farther away--then back, and all about the house again, and I thought it would
never, never stop. But at last it did, hours and hours after the vague twilight
of the garret had long ago been blotted out by black darkness.
Then in that blessed stillness my terrors fell little by little away,
and I was at peace and slept. It was a good rest I had, but I woke before the
twilight had come again. I was feeling fairly comfortable, and I could think
out a plan now. I made a very good one; which was, to creep down, all the way
down the back stairs, and hide behind the cellar door, and slip out and escape
when the iceman came at dawn, while he was inside filling the refrigerator;
then I would hide all day, and start on my journey when night came; my journey
to--well, anywhere where they would not know me and betray me to the master. I
was feeling almost cheerful now; then suddenly I thought: Why, what would life
be without my puppy!
That was despair. There was no plan for me; I saw that; I must stay
where I was; stay, and wait, and take what might come--it was not my affair;
that was what life is--my mother had said it. Then--well, then the calling
began again! All my sorrows came back. I said to myself, the master will never
forgive me. I did not know what I had done to make him so bitter and so
unforgiving, yet I judged it was something a dog could not understand, but
which was clear to a man and dreadful.
They called and called--days and nights, it seemed to me. So long that
the hunger and thirst near drove me mad, and I recognized that I was getting
very weak. When you are this way you sleep a great deal, and I did. Once I woke
in an awful fright--it seemed to me that the calling was right there in the
garret! And so it was: it was Sadie's voice, and she was crying; my name was
falling from her lips all broken, poor thing, and I could not believe my ears
for the joy of it when I heard her say:
"Come back to us--oh, come back to us, and forgive--it is all so
sad without our--"
I broke in with SUCH a grateful little yelp, and the next moment Sadie
was plunging and stumbling through the darkness and the lumber and shouting for
the family to hear, "She's found, she's found!"
The days that followed--well, they were wonderful. The mother and Sadie
and the servants--why, they just seemed to worship me. They couldn't seem to
make me a bed that was fine enough; and as for food, they couldn't be satisfied
with anything but game and delicacies that were out of season; and every day
the friends and neighbors flocked in to hear about my heroism--that was the
name they called it by, and it means agriculture. I remember my mother pulling
it on a kennel once, and explaining it in that way, but didn't say what
agriculture was, except that it was synonymous with intramural incandescence;
and a dozen times a day Mrs. Gray and Sadie would tell the tale to new-comers,
and say I risked my life to save the baby's, and both of us had burns to prove
it, and then the company would pass me around and pet me and exclaim about me,
and you could see the pride in the eyes of Sadie and her mother; and when the
people wanted to know what made me limp, they looked ashamed and changed the
subject, and sometimes when people hunted them this way and that way with
questions about it, it looked to me as if they were going to cry.
And this was not all the glory; no, the master's friends came, a whole
twenty of the most distinguished people, and had me in the laboratory, and
discussed me as if I was a kind of discovery; and some of them said it was
wonderful in a dumb beast, the finest exhibition of instinct they could call to
mind; but the master said, with vehemence, "It's far above instinct; it's
REASON, and many a man, privileged to be saved and go with you and me to a
better world by right of its possession, has less of it that this poor silly
quadruped that's foreordained to perish"; and then he laughed, and said:
"Why, look at me--I'm a sarcasm! bless you, with all my grand intelligence,
the only thing I inferred was that the dog had gone mad and was destroying the
child, whereas but for the beast's intelligence--it's REASON, I tell you!--the
child would have perished!"
They disputed and disputed, and I was the very center of subject of it
all, and I wished my mother could know that this grand honor had come to me; it
would have made her proud.
Then they discussed optics, as they called it, and whether a certain
injury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could not agree
about it, and said they must test it by experiment by and by; and next they
discussed plants, and that interested me, because in the summer Sadie and I had
planted seeds--I helped her dig the holes, you know--and after days and days a
little shrub or a flower came up there, and it was a wonder how that could
happen; but it did, and I wished I could talk--I would have told those people
about it and shown then how much I knew, and been all alive with the subject;
but I didn't care for the optics; it was dull, and when they came back to it
again it bored me, and I went to sleep.
Pretty soon it was spring, and sunny and pleasant and lovely, and the
sweet mother and the children patted me and the puppy good-bye, and went away
on a journey and a visit to their kin, and the master wasn't any company for
us, but we played together and had good times, and the servants were kind and
friendly, so we got along quite happily and counted the days and waited for the
family.
And one day those men came again, and said, now for the test, and they
took the puppy to the laboratory, and I limped three-leggedly along, too,
feeling proud, for any attention shown to the puppy was a pleasure to me, of
course. They discussed and experimented, and then suddenly the puppy shrieked,
and they set him on the floor, and he went staggering around, with his head all
bloody, and the master clapped his hands and shouted:
"There, I've won--confess it! He's a blind as a bat!"
And they all said:
"It's so--you've proved your theory, and suffering humanity owes
you a great debt from henceforth," and they crowded around him, and wrung
his hand cordially and thankfully, and praised him.
But I hardly saw or heard these things, for I ran at once to my little
darling, and snuggled close to it where it lay, and licked the blood, and it
put its head against mine, whimpering softly, and I knew in my heart it was a
comfort to it in its pain and trouble to feel its mother's touch, though it could
not see me. Then it dropped down, presently, and its little velvet nose rested
upon the floor, and it was still, and did not move any more.
Soon the master stopped discussing a moment, and rang in the footman,
and said, "Bury it in the far corner of the garden," and then went on
with the discussion, and I trotted after the footman, very happy and grateful,
for I knew the puppy was out of its pain now, because it was asleep. We went
far down the garden to the farthest end, where the children and the nurse and
the puppy and I used to play in the summer in the shade of a great elm, and
there the footman dug a hole, and I saw he was going to plant the puppy, and I
was glad, because it would grow and come up a fine handsome dog, like Robin
Adair, and be a beautiful surprise for the family when they came home; so I
tried to help him dig, but my lame leg was no good, being stiff, you know, and
you have to have two, or it is no use. When the footman had finished and
covered little Robin up, he patted my head, and there were tears in his eyes,
and he said: "Poor little doggie, you saved HIS child!"
I have watched two whole weeks, and he doesn't come up! This last week a
fright has been stealing upon me. I think there is something terrible about
this. I do not know what it is, but the fear makes me sick, and I cannot eat,
though the servants bring me the best of food; and they pet me so, and even
come in the night, and cry, and say, "Poor doggie--do give it up and come
home; DON'T break our hearts!" and all this terrifies me the more, and
makes me sure something has happened. And I am so weak; since yesterday I
cannot stand on my feet anymore. And within this hour the servants, looking
toward the sun where it was sinking out of sight and the night chill coming on,
said things I could not understand, but they carried something cold to my
heart.
"Those poor creatures! They do not suspect. They will come home in
the morning, and eagerly ask for the little doggie that did the brave deed, and
who of us will be strong enough to say the truth to them: 'The humble little
friend is gone where go the beasts that perish.'"
Category:Twain
Category:St-Louis Globe
Category:Published