A DOG'S TALE by Mark Twain
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 the 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.
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.
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 Mavourneen. 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, businesslike, prompt, decided, unsentimental, and with that kind of
trim-chiselled 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 workroom and slept, she gently using me for a footstool, 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 than I was, nor a gratefuller 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 a
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 woke
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 waistband, 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 wonderfully 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 fore-leg, 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 me some good.
For half an hour there was a
commotion down-stairs, 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 further and further 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
terror 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. 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 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 than 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 centre and 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 them 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 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 as 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 drooped 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
furthest 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 any more. 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.'"
Grateful thanks to Project Gutenberg.
