“Presently the train started, and, though I was still terrified, I found it was not as bad to be on the thing as to watch it going by.
“I had only a short trip on it. In about five minutes we stopped at a station, and to my immense surprise he picked me up, threw his coat over me, and sprang to the platform.
“I felt myself jammed against something hard, then the coat was pulled off me, and I was alone. He had deserted me.
“I looked about me. I was on a high platform, railway tracks on both sides of me; and beyond me were other platforms and more railway tracks. This was the One Hundred and Eightieth Railway Station in the Bronx, I found out afterward. The Italian had put me close to the door of a waiting-room, and you may be sure that I was in no haste to leave my shelter. It was just a tiny corner, but I flattened myself in it, for even if I had wished to leave it, my limbs were too tired and sore to carry me.
“Trains came dashing by every few minutes, first on one side, then on the other. It seemed to me that I would go crazy with the noise and confusion, and I was sure that each train would strike me. That was very stupid in me. There were the tracks, why should the trains leave them? But my head was still dizzy from the blow I had received, and my dog mind was bewildered.
I was crazy for the time. Then back of all fright and body pain was the dreadful ache of homesickness. I had no place to go. No one can tell the terror of a lost dog, especially when that dog is timid. I had been torn from my home—a poor home, but still a dear one to me, and I was out in a world of confusion and fright and hurry. If I stepped from my corner, some of those rushing people might hurl me to the railway track in front of one of the cruel-looking engines, which would grind me to pieces. Oh, if some one would only come to my aid, and I stared and stared at the nice faces whirling by. My eyes felt as big as the engine headlights. Why could not some one read my story in them?
“It is astonishing how few people can tell when a dog is lost. They don’t even know when it is unhappy. Yet dogs have expression in their faces. So many kind men and women gave me a glance. Some even said, ‘Good doggie.’ One nice old lady in glasses remarked, ‘The emblem of faithfulness is a dog. See that one sitting there, waiting for his master’s return.’
“Unthinking old lady! My master would
never return, and where, oh, where was I to get some water, for by this time my tongue was so dry that it felt swollen and my throat was as parched as a brick.
“Hour after hour I sat there, and the dreadful railway rush of New York went on. You know nothing about that rush here in this comparatively quiet city of Toronto. The station hands and ticket sellers were all downstairs, for I was on the elevated part of the station. Finally two young men stopped in front of me, and one of them said, ‘What a dismayed-looking dog! I wonder if we could do anything for it?’