BY PYE POD.
"Why, Toby's nought but a mongrel; there's nought to look at in her." But I says to him, "Why, what are you yoursen but a mongrel? There wasn't much pickin' o' your feyther an' mother, to look at you." Not but what I like a bit o' breed myself, but I can't abide to see one cur grinnin' at another.—Mill on the Floss.
The good old black mammy, who made my acquaintance on the street, called upon me at the hotel to present me with a little dog. I thanked her, and told her that one dog was all I could take care of; whereupon she argued that I should visit the Indian Reservation at Tama City, and if I presented a dog to the Chief that I would be royally received. A good idea; I wondered it had not occurred to me. I accepted the dog.
An hour later I came near being arrested for promoting a dog fight in defiance of the law. Don was generous, however, and left a little of the cur for the Indian Chief, but next morning the sight of a bandaged and plastered dog being dragged behind my outfit was gruesome indeed.
This is how I managed the dogs. I chained Don to one end of an eight-foot pole, and the mongrel to the other, so that the dogs could not get closer than four feet. Then I chained Don to the saddle-horn.
I hoped to reach the town of DeWitt before dark. Everything went smoothly and I was congratulating myself on getting out of the city without a mishap, when, suddenly, both dogs leaped to the opposite side of my donkey in the effort to reach a cat basking in the sun. The pole yoke caught Mac's hind legs and upset us, almost causing a runaway. This and other incidents delayed me many hours. On arriving at the village tavern, "The Farmers' Home," I was agreeably surprised to find the landlord not so much out of spirits as I. A "night cap," then to bed.
Next day I rode sixteen miles, through the beautiful farming country to Wheatland. Nature was arrayed in Sabbath attire, and no sermon could have inpressed me more than the pure, sweet voicings of God's creation. Graceful turtle-doves, always in pairs, flitted in mid-air; bevies of quail whistled in the meadows and ditches; flying-squirrels, half winged, half jumped from tree to tree; and coy Norwegian girls scampered indoors as my "mountain canaries" now and then joined in a carol.
Just before entering town a gay cotton-tail rabbit shied at my pistol ball, allowing the ball to graze a calf grazing in the field beyond, to wing a pigeon on a barn further on, and eventually to announce my advent to the towns-folk in a most singular manner.
When I arrived, the church bell was faintly tolling, and a crowd of people were staring wild-eyed at the belfry tower. I inquired of a countryman what was up.