Their strains do not strike me as trivial; they have a
lesser distinction of their own and I would not miss them from
the choir.
The literary man will smile at this and say that
my paper is naught but an idle exercise, but I fancy I shall
sleep the better tonight for having discharged this ancient
debt which has been long on my conscience.
Chapter Twenty-Five: My Friend Jack
My friend rack is a retriever - very black, very curly, perfect
in shape, but just a retriever; and he is really not my
friend, only he thinks he is, which comes to the same thing.
So convinced is he that I am his guide, protector, and true
master, that if I were to give him a downright scolding or
even a thrashing he would think it was all right and go on
just the same. His way of going on is to make a companion of
me whether I want him or not. I do not want him, but his idea
is that I want him very much. I bitterly blame myself for
having made the first advances, although nothing came of it
except that he growled. I met him in a Cornish village in a
house where I stayed. There was a nice kennel there, painted
green, with a bed of clean straw and an empty plate which had
contained his dinner, but on peeping in I saw no dog. Next
day it was the same, and the next, and the day after that;
then I inquired about it - Was there a dog in that house or
not? Oh, yes, certainly there was: Jack, but a very
independent sort of dog. On most days he looked in, ate his
dinner and had a nap on his straw, but he was not what you
would call a home-keeping dog.
One day I found him in, and after we had looked for about a
minute at each other, I squatting before the kennel, he with
chin on paws pretending to be looking through me at something
beyond, I addressed a few kind words to him, which he received
with the before-mentioned growl. I pronounced him a surly
brute and went away. It was growl for growl. Nevertheless I
was well pleased at having escaped the consequences in
speaking kindly to him. I am not a "doggy" person nor even a
canophilist. The purely parasitic or degenerate pet dog moves
me to compassion, but the natural vigorous outdoor dog I fear
and avoid because we are not in harmony; consequently I suffer
and am a loser when he forces his company on me. The outdoor
world I live in is not the one to which a man goes for a
constitutional, with a dog to save him from feeling lonely,
or, if he has a gun, with a dog to help him kill something.
It is a world which has sound in it, distant cries and
penetrative calls, and low mysterious notes, as of insects
and corncrakes, and frogs chirping and of grasshopper
warblers - sounds like wind in the dry sedges.
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