"Why, if he likes the sheep best, he will like me best when I act as the sheep do."
"That's your mistake. He will not like you half as well."
"Why not?"
"For the same reason that nobody else likes you so well—because you don't act like yourself. Take my advice, now. Be yourself. Don't try to be anybody else. Depend upon it, if you ever come across a person that likes you, he will like you as a goat, and not as a sheep. A sheep you could never be, though you should practice all your life-time. Be a goat, then—be a goat, and nothing else."
This advice, I believe, proved of some service to the juvenile goat; and by the way, reader, perhaps it may be worth something to you.
XV.
ON BARKING DOGS.
It is an old saying—and there is a good deal of truth in it—that "barking dogs never bite." I say there is a good deal of truth in it. It is not strictly true. Scarcely any proverb will bear picking to pieces, and analyzing, as a botanist would pick to pieces and analyze a rose or a tulip. Almost all dogs bark a little, now and then. Still I believe those dogs bark the most that bite the least, and the dogs that make a practice of biting the hardest and the oftenest, make very little noise about it.
Have you never been passing by a house, and seen a little pocket edition of a cur run out of the front door yard, to meet you, with ever so much bravery and heroism, as if he intended to eat you at two or three mouthfuls? What a barking he set up. The meaning of his bow, wow, wow, every time he repeated the words, was, "I'll bite you! I'll bite you!" But the very moment you turned round and faced him, he ran back into the yard, as if forty tigers were after him. You see he was all bark, and no bite.