C. S.
A DOG STORY.
[June 1, 1895.]
Perhaps you will allow me to add another to your interesting list of dog stories. In a house where I once boarded there was a large and remarkably sagacious St. Bernard mastiff, who used to come into my sitting-room and give me his company at dinner, sitting on the floor beside my chair, with his head on a level with the plates. His master, however, fearing that he was being over-fed, gave strict injunctions that this practice should no longer be permitted. On the first day of the prohibition the dog lay and sulked in the kitchen; but on the second day, when the landlady brought in the dishes, he stole in noiselessly close behind her, and while for the moment she bent over the table, he slipped promptly beneath it, and waited. No sooner had she retired than he emerged from his hiding-place, sat down in his usual position, and winked in my face with a look which seemed to say, "Haven't I done her!" In due course, the good woman came to change the plates, and as soon as he heard her step, he slunk once more under the table; but in an instant, ere she had time to open the door, he came out again, as if he had suddenly taken another thought, and threw himself down on the rug before the fire—to all appearance fast asleep. "Ah, Keeper; you there, you rascal!" exclaimed his mistress, in indignant surprise, as she caught sight of him. The dog opened his eyes, half raised his body, stretched himself out lazily at full length, gave a great yawn as if awakened from a good long sleep, and then, with a wag of his tail, went forward and tried to lick her hand. It was a capital piece of acting, and the air of perfect guilelessness was infinitely amusing.
Geo. McHardy.
WOW: A STORY OF A CAT'S PAW.
[March 23, 1872.]
I think you will be interested in the following anecdote of a distinguished foreigner. One of the happiest results of that abandonment of their ancient exclusiveness which has rendered us familiar with the Japanese, has been the arrival on these shores of a very pretty fluffy little dog, a born subject of the Mikado, who hails or rather barks from Nagasaki, and who is happily domiciled with a friend of mine, of a sufficiently elevated mind to esteem at its proper value the privilege of being the master of a clever and refined dog. The child of the sun and the earthquake has been named Wow, an ingenious combination of the familiar utterance of his kind with the full-mouthed terminals of the language of the merely human inhabitants of his country. My own impression is that Wow smacks rather of the melodious monosyllabic tongue of the Flowery Land than of that of the Dragon country; but this is a detail, and, as a young naval officer newly come from Nipon remarked to me lately, with much fervour, "Thank God! a fellow isn't obliged to learn their lingo." Wow has made himself at home and happy in his Northern residence with all the courtesy and suavity of a true Japanese, and has attached himself to his master with apparent resignation to the absence of pigtail and petticoat, articles of attire replaced in this case by the wig and gown of a Q.C. About this attachment there is, however, none of the exclusiveness which characterises the insular dog. Wow is a politician, or at least a diplomatist, and he desires to maintain friendly relations, with profitable results to himself, with everybody. He succeeds in doing so to an extraordinary extent, of which fact his master lately discovered evidence. Very strict orders, including the absolute prohibition of bones, had been issued with regard to Wow's diet. The ideas of a country in which little dogs eat, but are not eaten, require liberality in his opinion, and Wow made up his mind he would have his bones without incurring the penalties of disobedience, which his master, in the interests of the delicate foreigner, was determined to inflict. A commodious and elegant residence was fitted up in the study for Wow, and he was permitted free access to the upper floors of the house, but the line was drawn at the kitchen staircase. That way lay bones and ruin, and its easy descent was interdicted by stern command, which Wow understood as clearly as did its utterer, though he at first affected a simple and unconscious misapprehension. Then Wow was reproved and gently chastised, an administration of justice performed with the utmost reluctance by his master, but with the happiest results. Nothing could be more admirable than Wow's submission, more perfect than his obedience. He never looked towards the kitchen stairs, and would attend at the family meals without following the retiring dishes with a wistful gaze, or betraying a longing for the forbidden bones by so much as a sniff. Attached to the lower department of the household is a humble cat, a faithful creature in her way, but not cultivated by my friend as I could wish. With this meek and useful animal Wow contracted a friendship regarded by his master as a proof of his amiability and condescension. (In my capacity of narrator I am compelled to use the latter somewhat injurious term—as a private individual with an undying recollection, I repudiate it). But the single-minded Q.C. had something to learn of the four-footed exile from the Far East concerning this intimacy. Coming into his study one day at an unusual hour, he saw the cat—I do not know her name, I am afraid she has not one—stealthily depositing a bone behind a curtain. Presently she went downstairs, and returned with a second bone, which she conveyed to the same place of concealment, whence proceeded a gentle rustling and whisking, suggestive of the presence of Wow, whose house, or pagoda, was empty. Then arose the Q.C., and cautiously peeped behind the curtain, where he beheld Wow and his humble friend amicably discussing their respective bones, Wow's being the bigger and the meatier of the two.