If you want more evidence of the high esteem in which dogs are held, I might recommend to you a very pretty dog story called “Rab and his Friends,” the reading of which will give you a pleasant hour. Also in a book called “Spare Hours,” the author of “Rab and his Friends” gives amusing accounts of all his different dogs, which I am sure you would be pleased to read, even though you find many long words in it which you cannot understand.
But enough has been given to show you that in the high esteem you have for your favorite, and in your determination to treat him as a dog should be treated, you are sustained by the very best authority.
COUNTRY NEIGHBORS AGAIN.
Do my dear little friends want to hear a word more about our country neighbors? Since we wrote about them, we have lived in the same place more than a year, and perhaps some of you may want to know whether old Unke or little Cri-cri have ever come up to sit under the lily-leaves by the fountain, or Master Furry-toes, the flying squirrel, has amused himself in pattering about the young lady’s chamber o’ nights? I am sorry to say that our country neighbors have entirely lost the neighborly, confiding spirit that they had when we first came and settled in the woods.
Old Unke has distinguished himself on moonlight nights in performing bass solos in a very deep, heavy voice, down in the river, but he has never hopped his way back into that conservatory from which he was disgracefully turned out at the point of Mr. Fred’s cane. He has contented himself with the heavy musical performances I spoke of, and I have fancied they sounded much like “Won’t come any more,—won’t come any more,—won’t come any more!”
Sometimes, strolling down to the river, we have seen his solemn green spectacles emerging from the tall water-grasses, as he sat complacently looking about him. Near by him, spread out on the sunny bottom of the pool, was a large flat-headed water-snake, with a dull yellow-brown back and such a swelled stomach that it was quite evident he had been making his breakfast that morning by swallowing some unfortunate neighbor like poor little Cri-cri. This trick of swallowing one’s lesser neighbors seems to prevail greatly among the people who live in our river. Mr. Water-snake makes his meal on little Mr. Frog, and Mr. Bullfrog follows the same example. It seems a sad state of things; but then I suppose all animals have to die in some way or other, and perhaps, if they are in the habit of seeing it done, it may appear no more to a frog to expect to be swallowed some day, than it may to some of us to die of a fever, or be shot in battle, as many a brave fellow has been of late.