I believe that Spicer, my fox-terrier, is the only other member of the class that has quit the game completely. She stayed with my family for nine years, never comprehending the Germans as a people—she was English—and apparently never wanting to. Pilsner beer was the only German product she would succumb to. Three saucerfuls after each afternoon tramp constituted her portion. As she never staggered, and never misbehaved herself otherwise under the Pilsner influence, I think it agreed with her. In saying that she succumbed to the three saucerfuls, I merely mean that she knew when she had had enough.
If I could tell what "Pizey," as she was called later, meant to my family in ways that are dear and affectionate, and what she stood for in the "Colony," a great dog book would be the result. She came to us in a basket, after a serious tossing in the North Sea—a fat, pudgy little thing, full of John Bullism and herself. My mother and younger sister brought her to Berlin, and mother presented her to me, in the same language as in former days when she had given me "Major"—"Josiah, I've brought you a dog!" I rejoiced at twenty-two over such a gift as much as I did in my early teens. Little did I reckon then what it means to train a pup in a Berlin flat. With "Pizey" I would gladly go through the whole business again, but it is a task I feel that I must save my countrymen against. Even in Oskaloosa there are trying months ahead of him who rears a pup three flights up. (Fire escapes don't help a bit.)
"Pizey's" main interests were her own short tail and her long-tailed pups. When mother had nothing better to offer her guests by way of entertainment, "Pizey" was requisitioned, called into the parlor and made to chase her stub of a tail. If her guests were looking for other amusement they were disappointed, but "Pizey" wasn't, and I think that mother enjoyed the fracas. She once told the family physician that under no circumstances, no matter whether "Pizey" committed lesé majesté, would she destroy "Pizey," because she reminded her of Josiah, "when he was away from home."
"Pizey's" distinction as a member of the "Colony" lay almost entirely in her disregard of the Malthusian dream. She increased the Anglo-German entente by at least forty-seven little "Pizeys." Some of her progeny found their way into American homes and are trying to do right—perhaps a half-dozen. The remaining forty-one are auf der Wanderschaft.
"Pizey's" death was mysterious. I had long since left Berlin, and heard only infrequently about her. Finally the entire family moved away, and the dog was left in the old home, but under a new régime; she absolutely refused to emigrate. They say that she was stricken with asthma, and had to be put out of the way. I only hope that she was put out of the way in a square deal. The German scientists are very much given to dissecting dogs like "Pizey" while they are yet alive. If any German scientist perpetrated such an outrage on Spicer, I trust that his science will fall to pieces—certainly those parts of it based on "Pizey's" evidence.
[CHAPTER XI]
WANDERINGS IN GERMANY
Years and years ago, when Luther was giving us, or rather demanding of us, two strong legs and an obstinate "No" when it was our duty to say "No," there were thousands of young men in Germany who had wheelbarrows, and, I trust, the two strong legs; they were called Handwerksburschen, traveling apprentices, a name that remains intact with their counterpart of our day. The apprentices in honorably quitting their masters—I fear, sometimes before honor had become a definite part of their moral baggage—would put their bits of tools into the wheelbarrows, the masters would give them a glückauf, and away the young men would go over Europe, studying their trades in different countries, and getting acquainted with life in towns, villages and fields. In the main, they were earnest inquirers of their kind, seeking comparative wisdom and a friendly acquaintance with the Chaussee.