The next morning, one of our party, looking out of the window, saw Jack watching slyly outside of the hotel. Evidently he was waiting for an opportunity to cast himself at the feet of his chosen protectress.
"If I can only see her, all will yet be right," he says to himself.
We left Savannah in the cars that afternoon; and the last we heard of Jack, he had been seen following the carriage of his elected mistress in a drive to Bonaventure.
What was the end of the poor dog's romance we have never heard. Whether he is now blessed in being somebody's dog,—petted, cared for, caressed,—or whether he roves the world desolate-hearted as "nobody's dog," with no rights to life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness, we have no means of knowing.
But the measureless depth of dumb sorrow, want, woe, entreaty, that there are in a wandering dog's eyes, is something that always speaks much to us,—dogs in particular which seem to leave their own kind to join themselves to man, and only feel their own being complete when they have formed a human friendship. It seems like the ancient legends of those incomplete natures, a little below humanity, that needed a human intimacy to develop them. How much dogs suffer mentally is a thing they have no words to say; but there is no sorrow deeper than that in the eyes of a homeless, friendless, masterless dog. We rejoice, therefore, to learn that one portion of the twenty thousand dollars which the ladies of Boston have raised for "Our Dumb Animals" is about to be used in keeping a home for stray dogs.
Let no one sneer at this. If, among the "five sparrows sold for two farthings," not one is forgotten by our Father, certainly it becomes us not to forget the poor dumb companions of our mortal journey, capable, with us, of love and its sorrows, of faithfulness and devotion. There is, we are told, a dog who haunts the station at Revere, daily looking for the return of a master he last saw there, and who, alas! will never return. There are, many times and oft, dogs strayed from families, accustomed to kindness and petting, who have lost all they love, and have none to care for them. To give such a refuge, till they find old masters or new, seems only a part of Christian civilization.
The more Christ's spirit prevails, the more we feel for all that can feel and suffer. The poor brute struggles and suffers with us, companion of our mysterious travel in this lower world; and who has told us that he may not make a step upward in the beyond? For our own part, we like that part of the poor Indian's faith,—
"That thinks, admitted to yon equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company."
So much for poor Jack. Now for Savannah. It is the prettiest of Southern cities, laid out in squares, planted with fine trees, and with a series of little parks intersecting each street, so that one can walk on fine walks under trees quite through the city, down to a larger park at the end of all. Here there is a fountain whose charming sculpture reminds one of those in the south of France. A belt of ever-blooming violets encircles it; and a well-kept garden of flowers, shut in by an evergreen hedge, surrounds the whole. It is like a little bit of Paris, and strikes one refreshingly who has left New York two days before in a whirling snow-storm.