| PAGE | |
| Some Dogs | [3] |
| Little Pictures of People | [21] |
| Wanderlust | [43] |
| Travel | [69] |
| Fellow Passengers | [87] |
| Parents and Children | [99] |
| What Is Education? | [115] |
| Just a Letter | [131] |
| In the Undertaker’s Shop | [151] |
| Writers | [167] |
| “Ann Veronica” | [185] |
| Holidays | [207] |
| Servants | [223] |
| Mrs. White’s | [239] |
SOME DOGS
WHEN the occasion is propitious, I always find it interesting to ask a person I don’t know well if he, or she, is fond of dogs. The propitiousness of the occasion is perfect, however, only when there is a dog in the same room or on the same piazza, or wherever we, for the moment, happen to be talking. The reply to this question is to me a kind of exquisitely personal barometer. From it I have always been able to gauge with extreme accuracy the degree to which my sympathy and friendship with him who makes it might possibly rise. False answers to other questions have often deceived me, but a reply to the inquiry: Are you fond of dogs? never has. From the way in which the reply is phrased, from the tone in which it is spoken, from the facial expression that accompanies it, I am instinctively able to “size it up,” weigh it, and see exactly what there is behind it.
From otherwise altogether estimable women I often elicit this: “Oh, yes, I like dogs; but I like them in their place.” This, of course, means that they innately loathe dogs; that they are afraid of them and have a horror of them; that they regard a dog as something which potentially damages furniture and carpets, ruins flower beds, and gives children hydrophobia. By me, anyone who descends to the level of declaring that he “likes dogs, but likes them in their place,” is simply struck from the list. It is a most usual reply; it might, indeed, in all propriety, be added to the bromidioms, except that a bromidiom is more a stereotyped little collection of words that slip out with no particular motive or intention, whereas a declaration to the effect that one likes dogs, but likes them in their place, is charged with meanings for anyone who looks for them. It is one of those curious and unexplained facts that almost nobody likes openly to confess an aversion to dogs. Among our acquaintances we all have a frank and vehement enemy of cats, but he who hates dogs rarely permits himself to say anything more definitely antagonistic than that he likes dogs—in their place. Under an assumed name he does, from time to time, relieve himself in the correspondence column of a newspaper, but it is invariably under an assumed name. If I disliked dogs, I should not hesitate to say so, just as I do not hesitate to admit that I am terrified by a snake, even if I know it to be harmless, or by the mere idea of ascending to a great height and peering over the edge. Such terrors are illogical, unreasonable, anything you please, but they are inborn and they persist, and few persons object to confessing to them. But no one, on the other hand, likes to have it believed of him either that his sense of humor is not keen, or that he is not fond of dogs. This, of course, is, in the long run, all to the glory of dogs. Even the people who constitutionally dislike them can rarely bring themselves openly to say so.
To me, an inability to love a dog is comprehensible only in the same sense I can comprehend that an uncle of mine, who had a delightful talent for drawing, was hopelessly color-blind, and that another member of my family and two of my friends are what is called “tone-deaf.” You might play to them the introduction to “Lohengrin” and then “Annie Rooney” at regular intervals every day for a month, and at the end of that time it would be impossible for them to tell which was which. In other respects adequately equipped, they were simply born without the apparatus necessary to distinguish between one combination of musical sounds and another. They all hate to admit that music gives them little or no pleasure; one of them has even gone so far as to become, in an amateur way, an authority on the history and theory of music, but if in his presence some one begins to play the piano, he is always pathetically unaware as to whether he is listening to a nocturne by Chopin, or a cakewalk sung into popularity by May Irwin.
Persons who “like dogs in their place” always seem to me to have been born with much the same sort of defect—or perhaps it would be kinder and truer to call it an omission. But then, my attitude toward dogs may be abnormal. I don’t know. I can only recall a lecture by William Dean Howells in which, when he paused to give some incidental advice to young writers, he said, in effect, “In writing, never hesitate to express what you feel is a thought, a sensation or a state of mind peculiar to yourself. It never is peculiar to yourself. The paragraph you shrink from writing because you feel it will be understood by you alone, is the one that will be read with the most sympathetic interest.” (After all these years I cannot quote Mr. Howells verbatim, but that was his idea; it deeply impressed me.) So here goes.
“Love” is a portentous word that we use rather recklessly, but in considering its meaning, in employing it after the deliberation that is its due, I can, in all seriousness, say that during my lifetime I have loved more dogs than I have loved human beings. There are inevitably a few humans whom we love, but, in my own case, I simply cannot evade the fact, even if I wanted to (which I don’t), that the human beings I have been unreservedly devoted to have been fewer than the dogs for whom I have experienced the same sort of emotions. What, after all, do we mean, in of course its platonic sense, by love? To me it means a state of mind that would be tremendously upset in a purely disinterested fashion by the sudden elimination of somebody else. It means that somebody has become part of your life, part of your thoughts, part of your habits, and that for the most part you think of him or her or it, as the case may be, with satisfaction. You like to know that “they” (whoever they are) are in the world with you. You regret your partings and look forward to your meetings. You stop and think, sometimes, how different life would be if they died, and when they die, a sort of hole is knocked into your world, that you, for a long time, are unable to fill up. That may or may not be a good definition of affection, but it expresses the feeling I have had for a few people and a lot of dogs.