That's about all. Too much, I am afraid. A decent fate made it quick the
other night, and clean and close at hand, in fact, on the same street
corner where once a car had left the small scapegrace for us. We tell
ourselves how glad we are it happened as it did, instead of an agonal
ending such as many of his people come to. We tell ourselves we
couldn't have had him for ever in any event; that some day, for the
junior member's sake, we shall get another dog. We keep telling
ourselves these things, and talking with animation on other topics. The
muzzle, the leash, the drinking dish are hidden, the last muddy paw
track swept up, the nose smudges washed off the favorite front window
pane.
But the house is full of a little snoofing, wagging, loving ghost. I
know how the boy Thoreau felt about a hereafter with dogs barred. I want
to think that somewhere, some time, I will be coming home again, and
that when the door opens Nibbie will be on hand to caper welcome.
THE FIFTY-FIRST DRAGON
_By_ HEYWOOD BROUN
Heywood Broun, who has risen rapidly through the ranks of newspaper
honor from sporting reporter and war correspondent to one of the
most highly regarded dramatic and literary critics in the country,
is another of these Harvard men, but, as far as this book is
concerned, the last of them. Broun graduated from Harvard in 1910;
was several years on the New York _Tribune_, and is now on the
_World_.
There is no more substantially gifted newspaper man in his field;
his beautifully spontaneous humor and drollery are counterbalanced
by a fine imaginative sensitiveness and a remarkable power in the
fable or allegorical essay, such as the one here reprinted. His
book, _Seeing Things at Night_, is only the first-fruit of truly
splendid possibilities. If I may be allowed to prophesy, thus
hazarding all, I will say that Heywood Broun is likely, in the next
ten or fifteen years, to do as fine work, both imaginative and
critical, as any living American of his era.
Of all the pupils at the knight school Gawaine le Cœur-Hardy was
among the least promising. He was tall and sturdy, but his instructors
soon discovered that he lacked spirit. He would hide in the woods when
the jousting class was called, although his companions and members of
the faculty sought to appeal to his better nature by shouting to him to
come out and break his neck like a man. Even when they told him that the
lances were padded, the horses no more than ponies and the field
unusually soft for late autumn, Gawaine refused to grow enthusiastic.
The Headmaster and the Assistant Professor of Pleasaunce were discussing
the case one spring afternoon and the Assistant Professor could see no
remedy but expulsion.
"No," said the Headmaster, as he looked out at the purple hills which
ringed the school, "I think I'll train him to slay dragons."
"He might be killed," objected the Assistant Professor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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