Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 267, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 November 1915 — ALWAYS MAN’S BEST FRIEND [ARTICLE]

ALWAYS MAN’S BEST FRIEND

Dog Every Ready to Respond to the Mood, Pleasant or Otherwise, of Master He Loves. Fisher Ames, not the Revolutionary hero, but one'of his descendants, once remarked that a dog is a better friend than a human being. “For,” said he, "the dog will be at your feet, ready at any moment to respond to your mood, while a human being will go off in a huff if you do not respond to his mood.” Ames bred Airedale terries and exhibited them in Philadelphia, New York and Boston, until he won a championship for one of them, and then he lost Interest in the subject. His mood for dogs passed, but whenever it returned the dog responded as\ though he had not neglected them for other amusements.

The Eskimos have put Ames’ remark into a proverb based on a long experience in the Arctic wilds. They say that “a man’s best friend is his dog, even better than his wife.” The Brahmin blood of New England and the blubber-eating seal hunter of the North react in the same way when brought up against the facts of life. Men seem to be the same in all climates, and we have the authority of the Spaniards for saying that dogs are the same also, for their proverbmakers have concluded that “dogs have teeth in all countries.”