In a mischievous mood, he can hide in a lady’s shoe, or wake the children and hear them wonder what it was. There are Eastern adventures to be had among “spacious and elegant apartments”, where he can choose from “a carpet of various colours” a flower that will hide him, and crouch motionless at a passing footstep; and when there is a price upon his head, or the house catches fire, there are still more thrilling adventures of escape.
Should a critic remark that these things do not make up one quarter of the book, a child may tell him that he does not mind sermons and, for that matter, can preach them himself.
In 1798, one of the most realistic animal stories appeared: Keeper’s Travels in Search of his Master,[115] the adventures of a dog. Its author, Mr. Kendall, wrote other books, mostly about birds;[116] but Keeper’s Travels was the only serious rival to Fabulous Histories.
If any parent had scruples about talking beasts, here was a book that could be put into a child’s hand with perfect safety. No eighteenth century writer could help making an animal reason as if he were human; but this is a real dog, wagging and whimpering his way through the book, and if he does not speak, the story is not a whit less interesting for that.
From the time that he loses sight of his master on a market-day by being “so attentive to half a dozen fowls that were in a basket”, his adventures are entirely natural and probable.
Keeper is never too human for belief: he does nothing that any dog might not do; yet he makes a good hero,—sticking to his quest in spite of pain and hunger, refusing comforts and saving the lives of children. Mr. Kendall sums up his hero’s virtues in a quotation from Cowper, for those who are “not too proud to stoop to quadruped instructors”. He was not the only lover of animals to quote a humanitarian poet. The author of The Juvenile Spectator in her quaint Adventures of a Donkey,[117] has these lines from Coleridge below the frontispiece:
“Poor little foal of an oppressed race!
I love the languid patience of thy face:
And oft with gentle hand I give thee bread,
And clap thy ragged coat and pat thy head.”