Ever since I bit a circus lion, believing him to be another dog like myself, only larger, I have been what Doc Watson calls a Public Character in our town.
Freckles, my boy, was a kind of a public character, too. He went around bragging about my noble blood and bravery, and all the other boys and dogs in town sort of looked up to him and thought how lucky he was to belong to a dog like me. And he deserved whatever glory he got of it, Freckles did. For, if I do say it myself, there's not a dog in town got a better boy than my boy Freckles, take him all in all. I'll back him against any dog's boy that is anywhere near his size, for fighting, swimming, climbing, foot-racing, or throwing stones farthest and straightest. Or I'll back him against any stray boy, either.
Well, some dogs may be born Public Characters, and like it. And some may be brought up to like it. I've seen dogs in those travelling Uncle Tom's Cabin shows that were so stuck on themselves they wouldn't hardly notice us town dogs. But with me, becoming a Public Character happened all in a flash, and it was sort of hard for me to get used to it. One day I was just a private kind of a dog, as you might say, eating my meals at the Watson's back door, and pretending to hunt rats when requested, and not scratching off too many fleas in Doc Watson's drug store, and standing out from underfoot when told, and other unremarkable things like that. And the next day I had bit that lion and was a Public Character, and fame came so sudden I scarcely knew how to act.
Even drummers from big places like St. Louis and Chicago would come into the drug store and look at my teeth and toe nails, as if they must be different from other dogs' teeth and toe nails. And people would come tooting up to the store in their little cars, and get out and look me over and say:
“Well, Doc, what'll you take for him?” and Doc would wink, and say:
“He's Harold's dog. You ask Harold.”
Which Harold is Freckles's other name. But any boy that calls him Harold outside of the schoolhouse has got a fight on his hands, if that boy is anywhere near Freckles's size. Harry goes, or Hal goes, but Harold is a fighting word with Freckles. Except, of course, with grown people. I heard him say one day to Tom Mulligan, his parents thought Harold was a name, or he guessed they wouldn't have given it to him; but it wasn't a name, it was a handicap.
Freckles would always say, “Spot ain't for sale.” And even Heinie Hassenyager, the butcher, got stuck on me after I got to be a Public Character. Heinie would come two blocks up Main Street with lumps of Hamburg steak, which is the kind someone has already chewed for you, and give them to me. Steak, mind you, not old gristly scraps. And before I became a Public Character Heinie even grudged me the bones I would drag out of the box under his counter when he wasn't looking.
My daily hope was that I could live up to it all. I had always tried, before I happened to bite that lion, to be a friendly kind of a dog toward boys and humans and dogs, all three. I'd always been expected to do a certain amount of tail-wagging and be friendly. But as soon as I got to be a Public Character, I saw right away I wasn't expected to be too friendly any more. So, every now and then, I'd growl a little, for no reason at all. A dog that has bit a lion is naturally expected to have fierce thoughts inside of him; I could see that. And you have got to act the way humans expect you to act, if you want to slide along through the world without too much trouble.
So when Heinie would bring me the ready-chewed steak I'd growl at him a little bit. And then I'd bolt and gobble the steak like I didn't think so derned much of it, after all, and was doing Heinie a big personal favour to eat it. And now and then I'd pretend I wasn't going to eat a piece of it unless it was chewed finer for me, and growl at him about that.