Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 33, Number 358, 31 October 1908 — Page 6

THE BOY AND THE DOG BY MARION HILL.

Copyright 1908 by Th,om4 H. McEee, WAS It your fault? Certainly not. It was the fault entirely of that Inscrutable abstraction which they call Providence. Providence made you a small boy, to begin with; and Providence additionally saw to it that everything which was most undesirable in the way of a dog should follow you home; yet when this combination resulted In Its usual disaster, Providence always discreetly stood from under and left you to get out of the mess as best you might, by yourself. Really, to be a small boy is to be but a hangeron by sufferance to. the ragged edge of the world, belonging to no rightful zone of enjoyment, and possessed of weird disqualifications which shut one out of each and every kingdom animal, vegetable or mineral. They were very Illogical you thought also very numerous. For to an abiding Mother and Father were added variable Nurses and Cooks, a fairly constant Aunt, her attendant Uncle, and whole droves of intermittent Grandparents. And It seemed to be the chief business of everybody either to berate you for not being around when they wanted you to be around, or to berate you for being around when they wanted you not to be. And the only safe rule to go by was to hurry out of the way the very minute you found yourself wanting to stay, and vice versa. Very illogical. According to Their Dictum no ooner did you succeed in- outgrowing the shameful

.condition of wanting privileges for which you were "too young," than you. found you had entered that shameless state of coveting diversions for which you were "too old." If there were a period of exact suitability, you missed It; It leaped by you in the night. No morning

ever dawned upon it. ..They were formida

ble only when massed

together Into a For- HE TROTTED FAITHFUL-

bldding Society, strew- LY BESIDE YOU. lug "don'ts" In the patch of experiments, like tacks in advance of a bicycle; collectively. They stood for ail things evil; Individually, though They were not bo bad. Your father was pretty harmless except on Sundays. He devoted that holy day of rest to evening up such scores as he had been unable to attend to on week days after he came home from business. At least, so it seemed. v Sunday looms In memory as a day of much blistering, morally and bodily. He would have known nothng about anything, if your mother had not told him, at supper time. But everything came up after the pie how you had been kept in at school; or barred out, as the case might be; what you had done to Jimmy Baxter's cat; what you had said to Jimmy himself; and what Jimmy's mother had said to you oh, nothing was kept sacred, lour mother's excuse for all this breach of faith was that she wanted to make a i good boy out of you. First the teacher took a whack at you ; then your mother; finally your father. All for the same thing, too. No matter how far away from the house you were when you were bad, you always found that the news of it got home first. Hearing it, your mother used to say she was "surprised." and your father used to say that he "expected as much." It is rather queer that you should have happened to be their son, for they knew so little about you. Your mother was always imagining you to be the possessor of a stack of virtues, highly Impossible to you; and your father was generally suspecting you or a heap of iniquitous conceptions, equally impossible. Aunt Leila was the only one who seemed capable of arriving at a decent average; you were just "boy to her, which simplified a lot 01 things. When you and a scrape tumbled Into the house together, Aunt Leila was neither surprised nor expectant; she merely grinned companlonably or laughed outright. Some people called your Aunt Leila young; a palpable mis-statement, for she was married how account for Uncle Edmund else? And even at that tender' age you knew that matrimony was Tery much of a settler, so far as youth was concerned. Now, In the affair or rather, continuous performance of Baxter's cat They were all mistaken. They thought you did not like cats. Nothing could be further from the truth. 'You lined cats. You did. indeed But you mostly liked them In motion. And you generally spared your

self no exertion to furnish them with an incentive. You used scientifically and honestly to feel that anything which had power to move with the wholesouled abandon of a cat ought to be kept moving; otherwise were wasted one of nature's best gifts to the cat tribe. Why should They have expected you to prove your love by going through life with a cat on your heart? Did they think a cat was easily obtainable? TheV should have known, as you did, that a cat belongs Invariably to high places, to fence tops, to shed roofs, not Impossibly to flagpoles, especially when you were near. But a dog belonged to the good, good earth; he was always underfoot and reachable. How you ached for a dog. For a permanent one. The transitory dog was a daily occurrence. He adopted you on your way home from school and came home with you, as far as the back door, no farther. Then you were taken to task for the happening and were detailed forth with the dog to lose him. Losing him generally occupied the whole of the afternoon if it were a nice day. Will you ever forget the admirable dog that absolutely refused to stay lost? that turned up at nightfall, confident of welcome? that was In the yard bright and early the next morning, wagging his tall nineteen to the dozen in rapturous greeting? the dog that adopted you so hard and fast that mother, father, cook, aunt, uncle, all were unable to disabuse his mind of the legality of the affair? the dog that was permitted perforce to remain and become yours? Never. Pat is unforgetable a very Slrlus in the constellations of memory. Pat seemed to be his name from the start. You never had a doubt about it. Pat answered to Pat as to the manner born. He seemed, moreover, emblazoned with the name Pat from stem to stern. It was preposterous to think: that he had ever been called anything else. He arrived on the highway of your Hie already named and ticketed as yours like that forward young woman in the mythology book who sprang full grown and completely armed from her rather's head or helmet, or something. You were glad she was armed, and you often wondered whether or not she was legged, too; but as she got around In the upper world considerably and performed a lot or deeds for you to study, she probably was. What a relief Pat was after myths! He was so intensely real. But he was nothing to look at. No, indeed. His homeliness was of a stern and unimpeachable character. Perhaps that is why They all hated him so, for grown-ups are always i partial to such of their animals as are nice looking including their children. A plain child has to walk an awfully straight path. Certainly Pat was no beauty. He was of a dirty white from tip to tip and he had a diabolical black smudge around one eye. Two black eyes might have been made of symmetry, therefore was Pat denied them. Nature accorded to Pat no meanest advantage. His one black eye gave him a frightful proscribed and sinister appearance. It was as If some fiend had fashioned him " in a moment of sport and then had chased him from Hades with an Ink bottle. Hut he was all yours that was his one and sufficient beauty. He stuck to you as no shadow

r i x

u

OF

HE Pi.NA.L1L1 x" FOUND YOU AFTER A PANTING SEARCH. could stick, independent quite of where the sun happened to be In the heavens. A shadow Is a mere fair-weather friend and fickle in comparison with Pat The only time he was ever in doubt of your whereabouts (and no wonder) was when you

were polished off and haled to church; and when he finally found you, after a panting search and In the middle of the sermon, his conversation on the subject was poignant. The minister and the congregation all looked at you with remonstrance as If you had been the barker. In the way of hiding his crimes from the hardhearted others, you performed service for Pat which you would have hated to perform for the Angel Gabriel. Your own clustered' sins were few and fairly coverable compared with the frightful things Pat could, and did, do. will you ever forget that morning when you found him careening happily around the garden with a choice rosebush In his jaws? That beast of a plant was a pampered thing, a kind of a family pet, and was all but rocked to sleep every night; It was certainly watched every minute of the day and its wretched buds counted every half hour. Well, Pat showed himself a connoisseur. That was the bush he wanted and no other. It branched from his glad head like the horns of a deer, and the more anguished you became in an attempt to recover it, the more or a game Pat took it to be. The bush was a sorry thing when you finally did recover it. You had to manicure It for a rull fifteen minutes barfore you could tell It from a pea brush. Then you replanted It; and had to rake the whole bed to hide your traces. Your particular Nemesis must have been to a ball

game or something that morning; for it mercifully came -J t

on to rain. Seldom

Indeed did the

ments conspire any way but against

you. Still, rain

did, and you were

saved, for the sub

sequent aeam 01 jHE PERFORMANCE

that rain-refreshed BAXTER'S CAT. nush was a slow and somewhat normal affair, and was attributed to blight. Then the fearful afternoon when you caught him trotting to the lawn with the hambone which was to form the nucleus of that night's supper what a soul-searing time you had trying to trim that mangled bone back to some faint semblance of its former seemly self; and the horror jrou endured at the table during the few tense moments that the maternal eye studied that bone disapprovingly; and the cool thankful perspiration which poured down your spine when the maternal edict was that no servant could be trusted! The slippers you had to retrieve! The chewed pens and pencils you had to burn! The holes you had to fill up! The footmarks you had to erase! The meat and milk that you were forced to pilfer! The milk matter was easy, though; for a trifle of water added to the pitcher fixed that. But obtaining meat was a harder job. You endured all the pangs of a father of a family with a strike "on" and the price or beer "up." You used to try sliding your portion or the roast to Pat at dinner time, under the table; but he exposed the combine by snapping his jaws gratefully together and slobbing an audible appreciation of your bounty. Then, ot course, the Assembled Don'ts got In an Interdict. And why? wasn't it your meat, once it was on your plate? Buc they begrudged Pat everything, even his optimism. He could not so much as wag his tail that somebody did not make unpleasant mention of neas the inference being that Pat shook fleas from that amiable stump much as dew is scattered from a waving branch. Fleas! Who ever heard of such a thing? Why, If you had been given five cents each for every flea on Pat's whole body you wouldn't have had money enough to buy a bicycle a high-grade one, that Is. And a queer way they had of transferring the odium to you of all that was reprehensible in your pet. You were made to feel that every solitary flea was a plague 6pot due to your own stained and mutilated soul; that had you been fair and unsmirched from your infancy up, ' Pat would have been flealess. The absurdity of this never struck you until it was years too late. At the time, you felt that It was all more or less probable. Sins and their punishments were mysteries together. You never quite knew what everything was all about. Such times as your conscience was as pure as an Easter Illy, some one would box your head nearly off your shoulders; and loads of times when you staggered and shuddered under the knowledge of crime too awful for words, somebody would give you a penny for being a good boy. You never got a penny and ease of mind to enjoy it; nevor. The only one who always understood you was Pat. If you were in sorrow, answering sorrow would leap immediately to hi3 loving eyes, and he trotted faithfully beside you with a gamboL Ha was never ready for rabbits until you were. If you were in fear, he heartened you. If you were for

running his legs were like lightning. If you were happy, he was mad with delight. If you were sleepy, he would drowse, too. In bed at night, though, he was but a mixed blessing. Undeniably a companion and a charm against burglars, nevertheless as a bedfellow indulged in certain thoughtlessnesses which you could gladly have dispensed with. For Instance, his initial dream was always about cats and he would chase them not only with agonized whispered oar us but with frantic running motion of his hina legs, ( which members, being invariably plastered against your tender young stomach, all but vivisected you. Waking, very much ashamed of himself, he would wetly dab an apologetic kiss upon your cheek and drop to sleep again. Lulled, you slept too; then the next thing you knew you were on the tloor, for Pat, getting hot, had braced his reet against the wall and shoved you into space. That difflculty adjusted, along toward the middle of the mgnt Pat used to make a point of remembering an ancient burr between his toes, and, sitting heavily upon some portion or your anatomy he would snuffle and snaffle and mumble those toes for hours at a time keeping you from due and desired slumber. And always at four o'clock in the morning he heard robbers and would so bark himself off his feet as to tumble the entire length of the stairs, from top to bottom, yelping all the time and too excited to know that he had fallen, glad of the miracle or being at the front door under whlcn he could sniff and whine to his heart's content,. Next, he would come bounding back in high glee to let you In on the joke, too, standing ecstatically over you to tell you It was only the usual milkman after all. Not but what Pat's idiocy could be a blessing at times. You remember of course the muscular spasm, fatally resembling a grin, which elected to attack your miserable face when you were being scolded and were actually frightened stiff? This spasm was good for a box on the ear nine days In the week in. the anti-Pat period; but after he arrived he always had the celestial kindness to see a cat, or sneeze opportunltely, at the very moment you were catching It the worst, thus giving you a pretext for an anguished smile and preserving you from being stigmatized as a brazen criminal who took amusement in his own vileness. And then, when you were out nt the danger belt and were off for the uninhabited safety of a vacant lot, what actual relief glowed from his honest face! The snuggle of his cold nose into your palm was the signal of release for all your black and bitter fancies, and with a whoop and a jump you answered to his pressing invitation to throw dull care i away. How long did you have him? You cannot possibly say. Those boyhood days stretched like a fairy tale from one long advenure to another, and time was measured not by hours but by experiences which came four million to a minute. You can remember Pat and snowballs, Pat and spring picnics, Pat and school, Pat and vacation; consequently you had him for the length of a good round lifetime, and you felt that he belonged to existence as inevitably as night and day. You drew your breath without effort and without effort there was Pat always bounding beside you; you analyzed no fur ther and took him everlastingly for granted. Then one day will you ever forget It? you went schoolward as far as your garden gate, and woke up to the fact that you were alone. There was no panting scuffle in your wake, no admonishing yelps from a decreasing distance, no commotion In the near underbrush, to signify that the rest of you was hurrying to catch up. You recalled with a cold sinking or your heart that Pat had not ambushed under the breakfast table that morning. So you whistled and called and wandered, worried, back toward the house a little. Then he slunk languidly out from under the bed, his head hanging, his legs dragging, but his loyal stump of a tall essaying to wag, striving to say: "Never mind me, old fellow; I'm not very fit this morning. Just go along without me for once, won't you, old chap?" You patted him and shook hands with him, heartening him so that be crawled to the gate, only to lie down there, his nose In the grass, his eyebrows moving anxiously, his brave bit of tall bluffing It right royally. That Interminable day at school Is a horror that that will go with you to the grave. Missed lessons and accumulating punishments, usually the dominant factors in your sum of daily suffering, faded Into trivialities, so anxiously did you keep listening for the sound of a Joyous bark. Four o'clock, the hour of reprieve for the pure In heart, meant nothing for you. You always had to stay at least half an hour and write "I have whispered" two hundred times; and then you had to stay another half hour and put in the "h." But once released how you flew down the road! Yet the very fear which spurred you on seemed to pull you back. Generally your first mad dash was one bee line from the school door to your pantry shelf where you hungrily bolted down everything which might be legitimately called yours,, and gnawed illegitimately around the edges of such things as were Intended Tor reappearance on the faziily table. But to-day you had no thought of Food. You dreaded to reach home, for all the haste you made to get there. And there was no comrade In the garden. You knew the worst right then, even without searching further, and if your race betrayed the haggardness of your heart, you must have been a pitiful little sight. Yes. Pat was where you thought he would be, under the shed, and he was dead. - Now, you haa seen dead things often enough before, had come across them In field and wood and had Investigated them with interest, the more dead the thing, the more intricate your interest; but things had never had any attributes for you in life, consequently they had practically never existed.

Death, life, all were mere abstractions, lacking the importance of the growing whistle you were whit-; tllng from a whillow. This was something terribly different. Pat more than a thing, he was a heart which was boundlessly loving; he was an Intelligent mind; he was a kindly and gracious spirit; he was Incarnate ( good humor; he was the soul of fidelity. These, then, were all transient? Oh. the unfathomable cruelty of It! I'nbellevable as It may sound, right here is where crypt In your first doubt about the God or your childhood. Why should He have both-' ered to tatte Pat? What good was your dog. you one dog. to Him who had such worlds of posses-; sions? You dropped your hand upon the well-loved, body, then then you sprang frantically to your feet; you needed some warm human sympathy to help you bear the dreadrul facts which that chance touch had established. Coming across Cook you forgot her usual asperities and told her. as well as you could, for the dry clutch at your throat, of what had happened; and she said it was a precious good riddance. Had ! she coarsely slapped you upon your two eyes she ' could not have shocked you more or deepened mora! the blackness of your misery. You sought your mother and told herr and In turn were told that perhaps It was better so. The' heartless words "a precious good riddance" shone unmistakably in her relieved eyes. J You were alone then in your sorrow. And before you always alone was the grim and brutal task of burying. The tragedy of all the years to come, the years when you would suffer, alone, and lose, alone, and bury, alone, focussed Itself in vague shadow of premonition as you dug out a resting place for your past companion. And talk of bravery when It came to lifting that poor companion but why talk about It all? Just a moment you paused before biding Pat for. ever, and In that moment you beard the Jeering but sweet, high laughter of your Aunt Leila. The. sound smote you like a whip and you cowered above the open grave as If stricken by so many lashes. "What mischief are you up to now?" the was calling challenglngly. But you did not answer. If you could spare poor unloved Pat the Insult of a laugh by remaining silent, you were going

ANYTHING WITH THE POWER TO MOV OUGHT TO BE KEPT MOVING. to so remain, hoping that she would go away. She came nearer, in slow amazement; then harrying she knelt beside you. "Why, Pat! why, Pat- why dear old dog," her shaking voice was murmuring, and the tears which rained upon his dingy coal were not all yours. For yours, which had not fallen before, came like a storm at sight of her and at the tribute of her white band with its pretty rings petting and stroking the poor stark body, "Why Pat! why. Pat!" In a flash you learned great truth, that the merry heart which goes through the world laughing where it may. Is also: the heart which weeps when It must and gives Instant girt of sympathy to all In need. For a second or so you gave way utterly, forgetting that yon were a man and weeping to a finish the greater part or your agony In her comforting arms, which had gotten around you somehow, you didn't quite: know how or when. As a rule, you couldn't stand arms. It was a little touch a very little toucb, thaC about the handkerchief but you have remembered It all these years, and always with a rush of gratN tude. It was her nice one. lace-edged and perfumy, but she put it over Pat's dear race that th earth oh, well, it was all years and years ago. A woman who could do that sort of thing must have a little sense, even If she was your aunt, sd you trusted her with a big question: "Is this ?" You paused for words area!

enough to fit the thought; but none would come. 8d

you used the little ones. Is this the end of him? You pointed to the grave, a mound by now, th tears once more drowning you. Your gruff speech; was deeply metaphysical even theological. Ii your hazy mind were Jumbled the comfortable words "the resurrection and the life," and yot knew they had nothing at all to do with the eas in hand; but, oh. If they only bad! Aunt Leila, trump that she was, went maglcalli to the very core of your Inquiry, to the shrine o your mystic hopes. . , "People say no; but, sonny-boy, I think there"! a dog-heaven. I do Indeed!" You cheered as magically. On the strength ol that slim "think." you reached out toward lif again and were ready to find it sweet.

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