Play over, then comes rest—rest as complete and perfect as the play. Stretched on the grass or before the fire, relaxed and languid, every muscle slack and every nerve quiet, he sinks to slumber profound and absolute. Sometimes a bit of joyous memory steals into his slumbering mind; an ear will cock, a paw will twitch, but for an instant, and he is again at perfect peace.
Then the call will come. Duty summons in the form of some sound inaudible to human ears, some suspicious odor too delicate to disturb a human nostril, and he is up. Back in harness, recreated, rested, ready for any demand upon that marvelous supply of nervous energy. And a neurasthenic generation wonders at it, while Cerberus patiently tries to teach by actual practice the simplest rudiments of health to a stupid and inattentive class of grown-up dunces.
That much vaunted and greatly overestimated thing called intellectual life, which humans use as a convenient excuse for all sorts of self-indulgence, is to Cerberus only the nice adjustment of dog data, knowledge, and experience to the needs of his complex relationships with those about him. These adjustments are delicate and intricate, for Cerberus lives, moves, and has his being, not in a world of understanding fellow-dogs, but with creatures duller than he and filled with every form of prejudice and conceit. Add to this the fact that these same folk represent to him not men and women, but for all practical purposes of immediate recognition and other important dog-matters nothing more nor less than a moving forest of male and female legs. How would you prosper, my proud dog-baiting relative, if your point of view was from eight to fifteen inches above ground, and if your horizon line could be extended beyond a few paltry yards only by a painful lifting of the head or the securing of some vantage point for observation? I fear, my friend, you would cut a much sadder figure than Cerberus at his worst.
And so his days pass. They are full of work and rest and play and, above all, a constant effort to square his dog mind to a man world. He does it pretty well; he does it better, on the whole, than man squares his to a God-made world. At least, his effort seems more sincere, his attitude vastly more dignified and honest.
The day’s work is over. Childish hands are clasped in slumber, maternal cares are soothed in the first sweet sleep of night, and paternal irritabilities are in the process of partial elimination by pipe and book and armchair and open fire.
Cerberus lies with his head across his master’s foot, a convenient arrangement allowing contact to replace sight on the blind side; and the seeing side commands the door. The autumn wind sways bare branches against the tiny house. Faint odors of apples and other products of the little farm seep up from the cellar, where in modest store they flank the winter’s firewood piled in orderly array. The year is dying. Cerberus stirs in his sleep. I lay my hand upon his lean side. I pause to feel the rapid beating of his little heart, scarcely slowed at all, even in sleep. Would that some power could slow it down; it will wear out all too soon—and then!
A door creaks. He rises; no bristling fury, no growling menace, only an orderly and methodical investigation of every corner of the room and hall. Then a dignified return and sleep resumed. A subtle compliment to his master’s competence, a mere gesture of coöperation with a trusted superior—this is one of those delicate adjustments of dog life to a man-made world. Of these Cerberus is a past master.
He sleeps. His “trusted superior” glances at the title of the book he reads and lays it on the table. No need to read now, when Cerberus teaches. The book is a scholarly treatise on The Mastery of Nerves.
