A Woman Rice Planter

by Elizabeth W. Allston Pringle

I take a bowl of water to him and he buries his little nose in it, but cannot swallow or even snuff it up. I can get nothing down his throat, so that it is impossible to treat him.

Sunday.

Poor little Snap was so ill and made such a constant appeal to me for help which I could not give, that I felt it was cruel to let him suffer longer, so I sent to Miss Penelope for a bottle of chloroform. He followed me from room to room, a feeble skeleton, all eyes, and still I tried to give him milk, and when he turned his head from that, I gave him water into which he would feebly dip his little black-tipped mouth.

At last I took him in my arms and put him on a soft cushion in a tall banana box; then I cut several pieces of very savory roast beef and put them all around his little muzzle. He could not eat them, but he could smell them, and I could see by his eye that it was a comfort to him to have them there.

Then I filled a sponge with chloroform and put it into a cone which I had made of pasteboard and put it over his head and covered up the whole thing with a heavy rug. After two hours I sent Dab to look in, and he came back radiant to say that Snap was quite well.

I went to look, and the dear little doggie roused himself from a delightful nap to look at me. All expression of suffering and appeal was gone from his eyes. He looked supremely happy and comfortable, and after glancing up at me he tucked his head down on the roast beef and went to sleep again.

I wet the sponge and once more left him. When I took him out the next morning, I could not believe he was dead, so perfectly happy and natural did he look. Dab dug his grave in my little garden, and I laid him to rest, feeling the loneliest mortal on earth when I got through.

September.

When I went in to Cherokee yesterday, I was amazed to find Nana quite recovered. I had told Bonaparte if she showed any disposition to eat, to give her rough rice instead of either oats or corn, and it seems to have been a happy thought, for it has agreed with her, and though weak still and much skinned and bruised by the way she threw herself about, she seemed quite well.

This is the eighty-eighth birthday of the sainted friend whom I visit every day. Every one in the little village sent her some little offering, so that her room was full of flowers and dainty trifles, and she enjoyed them so much. Though unable to eat anything and nearly blind, her interest in everything and everybody is vivid.