Persimel St. Remi was a gentleman of fortune, whose income was derived principally from large rented farms, the dues arising from which he sometimes collected himself, in preference to intrusting that important duty to a steward or agent. On his excursions for that purpose, he was generally accompanied by a favorite little spaniel, of a kind too small to be of any service to him as an escort, but inestimable for his qualities as a companion. One day M. St. Remi had ridden a long way to collect certain sums of money due him in arrears of rent, but which he had little expectation of being able to obtain without further trouble. To his agreeable surprise, however, his tenants paid him the whole arrears,—an event so unexpected that he could not conceal his exultation as he clinked the heavy bag of money on the pommel of his saddle, when cordially taking leave of his farmers. Merle—that was the little dog's name—was equally delighted; for his moods were always regulated by those of his master,—such is the mysterious sympathy between Dog and us; and ever as his master laughed cheerily to the chink of the gold, on his homeward ride, Merle barked and bounded alongside of him, clearly understanding that gold is a thing to be laughed with and not at, and that it is no laughing matter to be without it. This is what the old French writer asserts respecting the inward sentiments of that small dog. How he arrived at a knowledge of them, I know not, nor is it any business of mine. Well, Persimel St. Remi galloped on and on, until they reached the way-side well about halfway home,—the old stone trough, with the water sparkling into it from the grotesque spout carved out of the rock. Here he pulled bridle to water his horse, refreshed him further by slackening the girths of the saddle, and, unstrapping the bag of gold which was attached to the holsters, he placed it by his side on the rock, while he splashed his hands and face in the cool water. By-and-by he drew up the girths, mounted his horse dreamily, for he was a man of contemplative moods, and rode away from the way-side well, forgetful of his treasure, which lay temptingly on the flat rock, ready to the hand of the first comer. Not so his faithful dog, who, having in vain tried to lift the bag, which was too heavy for him, ran swiftly after the rider, whose attention he strove to arouse by barking violently, and careering round and round the horse when he slackened his pace. Failing thus to attract notice, he went so far in his zeal as to bite the horse pretty severely in the fetlock, which caused him to swerve on one side, and wake up his master to a vague sense of something wrong, the first idea that occurred to him being that his dog had gone mad. Cases of hydrophobia had lately occurred in the neighborhood, and St. Remi was convinced of the seizure by it of his poor dog when they reached the brook which flowed across the road. Instead of luxuriating and drinking in this, as he usually did, the spaniel circled away to where it narrowed, and leaped across it in his run. Then St. Remi, drawing a pistol from his holsters, fired at and shot his faithful companion, averting his eyes as he touched the fatal trigger, and galloping rapidly away from the death-cry that smote upon his ear; and, as he dashed the spurs into his reeking horse, he invoked maledictions on the money which was the cause of this unfortunate journey. The money! but where was it? Suddenly he pulled up his harassed steed, and the unhappy truth flashed upon him: he had left his treasure by the way-side well, and had shot his faithful dog for trying to remind him of it. Riding back to the well with mad speed, he found by traces of blood upon the path that the poor spaniel had dragged himself thither again to guard his master's gold to the last. There he found him, stretched out beside the bag of money, with just strength enough left to raise his head towards his master, with a look of forgiveness, ere he died.
The chronicler does not state what M. St. Remi did with all that money,—though we may be safe in supposing that he very exactly knew; but we would fain hope that he expended a moiety of it in founding a retreat for decayed dogs, as a monument to the poor little spaniel so faithful to him in life and in death.
Sporting dogs,—the setter, the pointer, the fox-hound, and all the several varieties of hound, have had their historians, from Dame Juliana Berners to Peter Beckford, and that more recent Peter whose patronymic was Hawker; while, on our side of the Atlantic, the late "Frank Forester" has reduced kennel-practice to a system from which the Nimrod of the ramrod may not profitably depart. Apart from history, however, and from didactic argument, the individual trails of dogs remarkable in their day have but too rarely been recorded. Certainly the shepherd's colley has been admirably individualized by the Ettrick Shepherd; but many a terrier—"a fellow of infinite fancy"—has passed through the world's worry without ever seeing his name in print,—unless, indeed, he happened to have fallen among thieves, and found himself lamp-posted accordingly,—has passed the grizzle-muzzle period of doghood unbiographied, and gone down to his last burrow unsung.
Among the regrets with which we are saddled for our omissions, not the least of mine is now galling me for having neglected to reduce to writing, on the spot, curious facts which fell under my immediate notice in the course of many years' companionship with a somewhat miscellaneous assortment of canine friends,—
"The little dogs and all,
Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart."
Nevertheless, I will endeavor to bring together in this paper such stray reminiscences of doggery in general as may occur to me while I write, illustrating the subject, as I proceed, with occasional passages from the careers, of humble, but eccentric individuals of the race.
Extinction has been the fate of some varieties of the dog, which have been either superseded by the progress of machinery, or have gone to decay in consequence of the annihilation of the animals for the chase of which they were maintained. When there were wolves in the mosses and caverns of Ireland, for example, there were wolf-dogs to hunt them. The last wolf of that country—and he was a wonder, from the then rarity of the animal—was killed about one hundred and fifty years ago; and although the breed of hound then known as the Irish wolf-dog—one of the largest, noblest, and most courageous of the canine race—was kept up to some extent for nearly a century later, we doubt much whether a single pure specimen of the variety is now in existence; unless, indeed, it may so happen that some ultimus Romanorum of the tribe still licks his patrician chops in the kennels of the Marquis of Sligo, in the possession of which family the last litter was many years ago supposed to be.
Reverting to times when I was a boy, I remember me of a generation of bandy-legged, foxy little curs, long of body, short of limb, tight of skin, and "scant of breath," which were regarded as the legitimate descendants of a superseded class,—the Turnspit of good old times. The daily round of duty of that useful aide-de-cuisine transpired in the revolution of a wheel, along the monotonous journey of which he cantered, as a squirrel does in his rolling cage, keeping in motion, by his professional exertions, the wheels and spinners of the spit upon which the joint was kept turning before the fire. The tight skin of this ugly dog was evidently a provision of Nature to secure him from entanglement with the machinery amid which his business was conducted. Had a Scotch terrier, for instance, whiskered and plumed, descended from his own more aristocratic circle to disport himself in that where turnspit was the principal mover,—the kitchen-wheel,—he might have found himself cogged, and caught up, and spitted, and associated promiscuously with leg of mutton as roasted hare; in which capacity he might eventually have been eaten with currant-jelly and considerable relish, receiving more honor, perhaps, "in that connection," than had ever in his lifetime been lavished on him as a member of society.
But Turnspit's profession is a thing of the past, his very existence a myth. The roasting-jack, with a wind-up weight by which the spit was turned, cut him out first of all; other inventions further diminished his importance. But the tea-kettle—which he somewhat resembled in figure, by-the-by—scalded him clean off the face of creation; for the bright steam-engine, attached nowadays to the kitchens of our principal hotels, has given a new turn to affairs, ruling the roast after a fashion that sets back old Turnspit into the remotest corner under the backstairs of the Dark Ages. I have alluded to his alleged descendants, as pointed out to my observation in boyhood; but they were an effete and degenerate race, purposeless, and wallowing much with the pigs, whom their grandsires would have recognized only to roast.
In one instance only, and that on this side of the Atlantic, do I remember having been introduced to any dog whose profession was at all analogous to that of the turnspit of other days. Falling into conversation with an old Dutch-Yankee farmer, in a remote and very rural district, I made some remarks about his dog, which was a very large, heavy one, of that no-particular-kind happily classified by the comprehensive natural philosophers of the barn-floor as "yellow dog." Farmer assured me that this fine fellow—whose name I am ashamed to say I have forgotten—did all the churning of the farm-dairy by imparting his motive power to a wheel. This piece of ingenuity, Farmer informed me, was originally and exclusively an inspiration from the intellect which animated his, Farmer's, proper clod; nor was he greatly exhilarated when I narrated to him the tradition of the turnspit, whose memory, I regret to record, he spurned as that of a "mean cuss," destitute of that poetry which dwelleth in the pastoral associations of the dairy.