| “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” |
But, then, this is where he differed from that majority. Man was his friend. Friendship meant loyalty, and loyalty should be unstained.
There was much in what he said. On many an occasion a dog will show that he knows better than a man, and can do things that transcend Man’s boasted powers. We all know that—or should do so—for the moment may arrive when we find ourselves dependent on the judgment of a dog. To fail to recognise it then is to create difficulties and to blunder badly, causing the most tractable of our friends to look up with a puzzled expression in their eyes, and the more head-strong and outspoken to go ahead, with this sentence, flung back over the shoulder—“You fools, you; when will you understand!”
And the fun of it all is that Man with his self-assurance, and that limited vision of his of which he seems sometimes completely unaware, thinks that he is training the dog, whereas the dog is perfectly capable, as will be shown, of at least in some directions training him. Thus, where differences arise, Man jumps to his conclusions and claims his prerogative. It is a sorry business when an all-too-hasty punishment follows, as it often does, for Man—so Murphy used to say—would find himself very frequently to be wrong. But then Murphy, when he talked like this in the after days, showing how easily We might make mistakes, and explaining so much that was not wholly realised before, caused sundry folk to wonder whether in some previous life he had in his spare time studied Bentham. For dogs or men to make mistakes is not necessarily for them to do wrong. “To trace errors to their source is often to refute them.”
He often quoted that; but on the only occasion on which he was asked about his previous studies he remained silent. He and his Master were sitting on the hillside, far away from the hum of men—as, in fact, they mostly were. His eyes were ranging over the valley to the skyline. “That’s the way to look, my dear master,” he appeared to be saying—“that’s the way to look. Never run heel way. For you and me there is a future. Look ahead, and cast forward; never look behind!”
His remarks often, in this way, touched lightly on great questions.
II
To look ahead in the hey-day of youth is to look forward to unclouded happiness. And, no doubt, to Murphy and those of his own age, the fact that the summer waned and that autumn followed, when leaves fell mysteriously from the trees and there were sporting scents in the air, made little difference to their outlook. Happiness had no relation to the seasons: they were all good in their turn. Jolly times ranged from spring to winter. And, perhaps, winter after all was best.