The splendid fidelity and devotion of the dog to his master have certainly been in part repaid by men of letters in all stages of the world's history. A valuable essay might be written on the dog's contributions to literature; in the poetry of the East, hundreds of years before Christ, the poor Indian insisted that his four-footed friend should accompany him into eternity. We know that this bit of Oriental pathos impressed Pope:-- "But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company." One of the most profoundly affecting incidents in the _Odyssey_ is the recognition of the ragged Ulysses by the noble old dog, who dies of joy. During the last half-century, since the publication of Dr. John Brown's _Rab and his Friends_ (1858), the dog has approached an apotheosis. Among innumerable sketches and stories with canine heroes may be mentioned Bret Harte's brilliant portrait of _Boonder_; Maeterlinck's essay on dogs; Richard Harding Davis's _The Bar Sinister_; Stevenson's whimsical comments on _The Character of Dogs_; Kipling's _Garm_; and Jack London's initial success, _The Call of the Wild_.[13] But all these latter-day pamphlets, good as they are, fail to reach the excellence of _Bob, Son of Battle_. It is the best dog story ever written, and it inspires regret that dogs cannot read. [13] One may fairly class with this literature the remarkable speech on dogs delivered in his youth in a courtroom by the late Senator Vest. The speech won the case against the evidence.