One bitter cold winter day, Pero’s master went to a grocery, at some distance from home, on pretence of getting groceries, but in reality to fill a very dreadful bottle, that was the cause of all his misery; and little Pero padded after him through the whirling snow, although she left three poor little pups of her own in the barn. Was it that she was anxious for the poor man who was going the bad road, or was there some secret thing in her dog’s heart that warned her that her master was in danger? We know not, but the sad fact is, that at the grocery the poor man took enough to make his brain dizzy, and coming home he lost his way in a whirling snow-storm, and fell down stupid and drunk, not far from his own barn, in a lonesome place, with the cold winter’s wind sweeping the snow-drift over him. Poor little Pero cuddled close to her master and nestled in his bosom, as if trying to keep the warm life in him.
Two or three days passed, and nothing was seen or heard of the poor man. The snow had drifted over him in a long white winding-sheet, when a neighbor one day heard a dog in the barn crying to get out. It was poor Pero, that had come back and slipped in to nurse her puppies while the barn-door was open, and was now crying to get out and go back to her poor master. It suddenly occurred to the man that Pero might find the body, and in fact, when she started off, he saw a little path which her small paws had worn in the snow, and, tracking after, found the frozen body. This poor little friend had nestled the snow away around the breast, and stayed watching and waiting by her dead master, only taking her way back occasionally to the barn to nurse her little ones. I cannot help asking whether a little animal that can show such love and faithfulness has not something worth respecting and caring for in its nature.
At this time of the year our city ordinances proclaim a general leave and license to take the lives of all dogs found in the streets, and scenes of dreadful cruelty are often enacted in consequence. I hope, if my stories fall under the eye of any boy who may ever witness, or be tempted to take part in, the hunting down and killing a poor dog, that he will remember of how much faithfulness and affection and constancy these poor brutes are capable, and, instead of being their tyrant and persecutor, will try to make himself their protector and friend.
SIR WALTER SCOTT AND HIS DOGS.
Master Frederick Little-John has of late struck up quite a friendship with me, and haunts my footsteps about house to remind me of my promise to write some more dog stories. Master Fred has just received a present from his father of a great Newfoundland that stands a good deal higher in his stocking-feet than his little master in his highest-heeled boots, and he has named him Prince, in honor of the Prince that I told you about last month, that used to drive the cows to pasture, and take down the bars with his teeth. We have daily and hourly accounts in the family circle of Prince’s sayings and doings; for Master Freddy insists upon it that Prince speaks, and daily insists upon placing a piece of bread on the top of Prince’s nose, which at the word of command he fires into the air, and catches in his mouth, closing the performance with a snap like a rifle. Fred also makes much of showing him a bit of meat held high in the air, from which he is requested to “speak,”—the speaking consisting in very short exclamations of the deepest bow-wow. Certain it is that Prince shows on these occasions that he has the voice for a public speaker, and that, if he does not go about the country lecturing, it is because he wants time yet to make up his mind what to say on the topics of the day.
Fred is somewhat puzzled to make good the ground of his favorite with Aunt Zeroiah, who does not love dogs, and is constantly casting reflections on them as nuisances, dirt-makers, flea-catchers, and flea-scatterers, and insinuating a plea that Prince should be given away, or in some manner sold or otherwise disposed of.
“Aunt Zeroiah thinks that there is nothing so mean as a dog,” said Master Fred to me as he sat with his arm around the neck of his favorite. “She really seems to grudge every morsel of meat a dog eats, and to think that every kindness you show a dog is almost a sin. Now I think dogs are noble creatures, and have noble feelings,—they are so faithful, and so kind and loving. Now I do wish you would make haste and write something to show her that dogs have been thought a good deal of.”
“Well, Master Freddy,” said I, “I will tell you in the first place about Sir Walter Scott, whose poems and novels have been the delight of whole generations.”
He was just of your opinion about dogs, and he had a great many of them. When Washington Irving visited Sir Walter at Abbotsford, he found him surrounded by his dogs, which formed as much a part of the family as his children.