Harvard Stories: Sketches of the Undergraduate

by Waldron Kintzing Post

THE DOG BLATHERS.

Besides the "officers of instruction and government," and the instructed and governed, there are many classes and individuals that make up the university population of Cambridge—unofficial members, whose names do not appear in the catalogue. There are the camp followers, the goodies, the janitors, the Poco, John the Orangeman, Riley, the O'Haras who "understand th' busniz," and all the other dignitaries, as firmly established and well recognized as the Faculty. Probably the most numerous of the unofficial classes is the great four-legged one. There are undergraduate dogs, and law-school dogs, and post-graduate dogs, and I believe there were one or two Divinity dogs. During our time there were several very distinguished dogs in the Faculty, notably one huge bull-dog. Among the undergraduates, the ugliest and most perfect in form and feature, the most polished and attractive in manner, the most genial and popular, in every way the leader par excellence, was Rattleton's round head bull-terrier Blathers.

Blathers was named after the great man who bred him. That celebrated fancier was renowned throughout Cambridge for two things, his dogs and his profanity. He could outswear Sawin's expressman, Hitchell the black scout, and the janitor of Little's Block, and any one who could excel those three was indeed an artist. I do not believe, however, that the recording angel entered all of Blather's items in the debit column:—in the first place, he would not have had time, in the second place, most of Blather's oaths were not delivered in anger, in the sense of Raca, but flowed out innocently and unconsciously, merely as aids to conversation. One morning this worthy came into Rattleton's room, bearing in his hand a little brindled object about five inches long. It looked like a stub-tailed rat, whose nose had been smashed with a lump of coal.

"Good mornin', Mr. Rattleton; beg your pardon for intrudin', sir, but I've got sumpthin' here I want for to show yer. I've got a magnificent animal."

"Oh, get out, Blathers; I don't want a dog; had to give away the last one."

The following speech was bristling with profanity, but I have omitted even the indication blanks, except in one passage where they were too characteristic to be left out.

"I don't want yer to buy him, sir. I just want to show him to yer. He's a beauty. I know yer knows the points of a dog, sir, and its just a pleasure I'm givin' yer to look at him. Just take him in your hand, sir. Now, I sold Mrs. G. an own half brother of that feller. You know Mrs. G., surely, down here to the Theolog. school?" (Mrs. G. was a most charming and gentle lady, the wife of a celebrated clergyman.) "Well, I stopped at her house the other day to see how she liked the pup. She says to me, 'By ——, Blathers,' says she, 'that's the —— —— finest dog ever I see; d—— me, if it ain't,' says she. Yes, sir, that's just what she thought about him. You go ask her and see if it ain't. And she wouldn't say nothin' she didn't mean, just to tickle me, neither. Mrs. G. is a real lady, and knows the points of a dog, she does. She was —— ---- kind to my wife when she was sick last time. Oh, my wife's been orful sick, Mr. Rattleton. I had to pay for a lot of doctor's consults and other stuff; that's just the only reason, sir, I want to sell this beautiful pup. I 'd never part with him in this world, if I could help it."

Blathers never would have parted from any of his dogs had it not been for his frequent family afflictions. These afflictions were always very expensive and varied, from the funeral of his mother to the birth of twins. He buried four mothers in one year; that was his best work, though six children born during the following term pushed hard on the record.

"If I could only make up my mind to let yer have that dog, Mr. Rattleton," he went on, "it would work both ways. Maybe I ought to do it. It would be a favor and a kind thing in me to sell yer that pup at any price, and you'd be doin' a charity to a poor man in helpin' me along. It would be a good action all around, see? Oh, I need the money orful bad."

Rattleton during this speech had been playing with the puppy, and he was struck both by the brightness of the little fellow and the logic of his owner. He knew that Blathers really did have rather hard times with his family. In any case Lazy Jack never took the trouble to sift a tale of woe and apply the most enlightened and efficient remedy. He had no excuse for not doing so; he took the Social Ethics Course in Philosophy because it was easy, and of course he knew how wrong it is to give to a beggar; nevertheless, he rarely failed to do so if he had a coin in his pocket, because it was so much easier than making enquiries and giving advice. Moreover Jack was so lacking in principles, that if he thought the beggar looked cold and in want of a hot whiskey, he was, if anything, more apt to yield the ill-destined alms. In this instance the insidious Blathers had struck him in two vulnerable spots, his very weak nature, and his love of dogs. He also wanted to get rid of Blathers with his endless stream of lurid and decidedly rum-flavored eloquence, and the easiest way to do so was to buy the puppy.