Master is Dr. Richard Wallace and I am Dandy, the doctor's favorite horse, long-tried companion and friend.
Neither of us are as young as we once were, but time seems to tell less on us than on some others, though I have never been quite the same since that dreadful year that Master was out West. He often strokes my face and says: "We're getting old, my boy, getting old, but it don't matter." Then I see a far away look in the kind, blue eyes—a look that I know so well—and I press my cheek against his, trying to comfort him. I know full well what he is thinking about, whether he mentions it right out or not.
Yes, I remember all about the tragedy that shaped both our lives, and how I have longed for intelligent speech that I might talk it all over with him.
He is sixty-two now and I only half as old, but while he is just as busy as ever, he will not permit me to undertake a single hardship.
Dr. Fred—his brother and partner—sometimes says: "Don't be a fool over that old horse, Dick! He is able to work as any of us." But the latter smiles and shakes his head: "Dandy has seen hard service enough and earned a peaceful old age."
Fred sneers. He says he has no patience with "Dick's nonsense;" but then he was in Europe when the tragedy occurred, and besides I suppose it takes the romance and sentiment out of a man to have two wives, raise three bad boys and bury one willful daughter, to say nothing of the grandson he has on his hands now; and I might add further that he is a vastly different man from Dick anyway.
It is a grand thing to spend one's life for others; that is what my master has done, and it is what we horses do. Of course he is looking forward to his reward, but we are not expecting anything, though he insists that there will be a heaven for all faithful domestic animals. Fred says there is no Bible for it, but Dick says that they could not mention everything in one book. He says, too, that while he believes everything to be true that is in the Bible, at the same time he knows many things to be true that are not there; then he tells about a good old minister, who, when asked to lend his influence in the organization of a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, replied that if Paul had written a chapter on the subject he would consider it worth his while to countenance the movement, but as he didn't, he must be excused.
For the benefit of such men, Master says he wishes the apostle had had time and inclination to write a chapter, and since he did not—with due reverence for Paul—it would have suited him better, and met a nineteenth century need closer, if he had omitted suggestions on ladies' toilets and dealt a few of his sledge-hammer blows at the man who oppresses the defenseless. Of course I know nothing about such things myself, but Dr. Dick has always had a fashion of talking all sorts of things to me, and I have a retentive memory.
But I must begin my story, for I have set out to give you a history of "Master and I" and, incidentally, of many another man and beast.
I will begin shortly after the tragedy; maybe before I get through I will tell you about that, but to-day I do not feel equal to it.