One other action of his deserves to be recorded, for it affords an instance of how nearly dogs approach at times to human beings. No man is so wholly hardened as to care to die disliked, while many have a fancy ere the end to seek forgiveness, that they themselves may die forgiven. So was it with Fritz. Like many men of genius, his temper was uncertain, and on more than one occasion he was known to bite. The day before he died, though old and infirm, he made a round on his own account and visited one or two to whom he had certainly behaved badly. His action was recalled when once again he disappeared. But it was further remarked upon—some adding that they thought they understood—when Fritz was found curled in a hole beneath a bush—and dead.

Graf, another of the same breed, but belonging to a period twenty years later than Fritz, had also curious ways of his own. He could run down a rabbit in the open, and did it on many an occasion; but if this was remarkable—a rabbit being reckoned one of the quickest of all animals for a hundred yards—his curious behaviour exhibited itself in quite another way. He was a dog of great character and cleverness, as well as perfect manners. It was the custom in the family at that date to have prayers on Sunday evenings. This Graf never failed to resent. There had been service in the church during the day, and Sundays were dull days for dogs: why have prayers in the evenings to make things worse? Therefore, to show what he felt in the matter, no sooner had the family left the room for prayers, than he gathered up the newspapers and tore them deliberately to pieces. It was not only once or twice or even six times that he did this. He did it repeatedly; and when the family returned, The Guardian especially was found in scraps upon the floor.

But he was otherwise a good dog, and so it was that he who read The Guardian week by week on Sunday evenings showed that he bore Graf no resentment, for when the dog died he wrote a poem running thus, the last line and a half of which are graven on Graf’s stone:

“Can such fidelity be all for naught? Is virtue less true virtue that it beats In a hound’s faithful breast? No, Graf, the thought Of thy pure, true and faultless life defeats
All doubt. No! Virtue lives for ever, and the same, Whether in man, or in his faithful friend Who looked but could not speak his love. The flame That warmed thy faithful heart can never end
In dark oblivion. If not a Soul Is thine, at least is Life. The same great hand Made thee and us; but where upon the scroll, At day of Judgment, shall be found to stand
A human soul so faithful to the end, So true as thou hast been? God’s great design Awaits both thee and us. Good-bye, sweet friend, And may our lives be simply true as thine.”

By way of parodying this, in the case of another dog, it was suggested by one who was flippant that his epitaph might run—“And may our lives have fewer faults than thine.” But while it is true that this one had run up quite a heavy bill in cats and committed many other enormities, the line De mortuis nil nisi bonum was kept in view, and, if nothing could be said, it was judged better to say nothing. Moreover, as Murphy duly remarked, while we talked over the wonderful doings of many and many a dog now lying in this sacred corner, “What could you possibly have expected in such a case, and from one of Us that you had wilfully named Scamp?”

There was, of course, something in that, and many of Scamp’s acts deserved to be recorded, though this is no place for doing so. At one time he was in London. Residence there naturally put a limit to the exercise of his sporting instincts, but he developed others to replace them. He was sometimes absent all day, to be found at the door at night; and on one occasion he met his master at a City railway station, when thought to have been lost for good and all—was indeed seen by his master to be making his way thither as he drove into the station yard in question.

To have done anything so clever as that might have been thought to have earned the right to headstone and epitaph in full. Yet his resting-place remains unmarked, and his name apparently dogged him to the end, and past it.

“What was that about De mortuis?” came the question from Murphy.

“Nil nisi bonum.”