Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1887 — THE DOG AND THE THIEVES. [ARTICLE]

THE DOG AND THE THIEVES.

A Sa"»»ileu» Animal's Frequent Efforts to , Want Hts Master of (Banger. A friend residing on Staten Island, whom I was in the habit of frequently visiting, had a very handsoml Irish setter, says a writer In the Brooklyn , Eagle. During the month of December, about, five or six years ago, the dog manifested an unusual degree of restlessness. He had been permitted to run at large in tho garden, and, until the time in question, seemed satisfied with this measure of liberty. Bnt .on Sunday morning he showed a strong desire to follow his master and mistress out at a gate as they were leaving to go to church. They drove him back, and instead of receiving the repulse kindly, lie protested in a series of piteous howls. In the afternoon his master took him for a stroll, greatly to the delight and satisfaction of the animal. Their wav skirted an uninclOsed lot about 300 feet distant, in which stood a deserted frame shanty. Bruno, when they came opposite it, darted off and ran round and round the building, pausing at intervals nnd gazing toward his master, who tpok no particular notice of his actions and continued the walk. After that the dog followed reluctautlv and would from time to time turn back, as if it was his intention to retrace his steps. These peculiar movements my friend recalled subsequently, although they did not excite his curiosity at the time. On Monday and Tuesday ensuing he betrayed the same eagerness to get out and attempted to follow when any member of the family left the premises. On Wednesday I was a visitor at the house. In tho afternoon my friend and 1 went out together, accompanied by tho dog. He acted, on passing the uninclosed lot, just as he had done three days before. His efforts to attract our attention were so marked that I humored him by walking across the lot. He led me directly up to the shanty, and then ran around it with his nose <‘lose to the ground several times. I could discover no reason for his singular maneuvers, and, attributing them to some idle freak, rejoined my friend and thought no more of Bruno and his eccentricity. Nevertheless the sagacious animal was wiser than either of us, although to our dullness his dumb show of knowledge had no significance. On Saturday night following, my friend’s house was broken ihto by burglars and about $2,000 worth of property carried off. But what connection had the burglary with the dog’s pertinacious visits to tlie shanty ? The police discovered it in less than thirty minutes after their examination of the premises. A narrow lane ran back of the garden from a side street to the open lot whfere the shanty stood. The burglars had made their approach by way of this lane. Footpi'ints in the wet snow were clearly visible. The officers traced these prints back to the north side of the shanty, and there the secret of tho dog’s curious behavior was disclosed. A few feet underneath the building was a kit of burglar’s tools, which had been stored there in preparation for the robbery, and which the burglars, in the hurry of their- flight, had not had time to carry off. A jimmy and pair of false keys lay close to the hole and revealed tlie exact spot where the kit had been hidden. The question of interest suggested by this remarkable case is: How did the dog know there was something concealed there for an improper purpose. That ho had such knowledge there is not tho slightest doubt. There is no other way to explain his eagerness tp draw his master’s attention to it. Moreover, this very eagerness raises a presumption in favor of the belief that the animal not only had a sense of the unlawful character of the enterprise, but a consciousness that it threatened the interests of his master.

Tlie Effect of Despotism on Russian Literature.

In other lands the national energy is absorbed and scattered in a thousand necessities and opportunities that lead men into various fields of action and adventure which here are closed by a rigid despotism. In the rest of Europe the trifling novel of mere amusement has sufficient reason for existing, but in Russia life is too serious; entertaining fiction has to be .imported along with champagne, and silks, and ribbons, and the native who writes speaks for the whole compressed anguish of a people in chains. Mere entertainment would be a degrading aim for a Russian novelist —that is, tlie luxury of ease and security, and not even the masters in that country know either 'of these. All writing is under the control of a vigilant censorship pstudents are forbidden access to what are regarded as dangerous books; yet the novel, by confining itself to the representation of familiar or possible facts, manages to elude repression. Even the sharpest-eyed censor does not; read what is written between the lines; but it is this part, printed as it were in invisible ink, that helps to fill out the terrible picture of despair that almost every Russian novel contains. Not merely, then, are the literary hobgoblins dead; they have never lived long; their shoulders were too weak to bear the burden of expressing real suffering and hopeless misery. Their absence is certainly a natural result of the condition of affairs; for just as cruelty begets deceit, so the despotism of that unhappy laud lias taught men td attack the abuse of power byportraying its results without uttering an aggressive word of abuse or criticism. Indeed, as a valuable means of drill in the technicalities of literature, despotism has never received, from writers upon education, half the praise that it deseryes. The writer is sure to be careful in his phraseology when a rash word may mean life-long exile; and one of the results of the terrors of the Russian penal code was that novelists learned compression and vigor, as well asall the possibilities of seriousness. We find this forcible reserve even during the brief flowering-time of rbmanticism, which is yet enriched by precise and vivid realism. —Thomas Sergeant Perry, in Scribner’s Magazine. Troth is coy and retiring; and to be fairly won must be ardently wooed; but, though shrinking from the gaze of the world, she rarely flies from her sincere and devoted worshipers.