Then Nemesis got up on the desk and poured the ink and mucilage into one
of the drawers on some bandages and condition-powders that the doctor used
in his horse-practice.
Nemesis then looked out of the window and wailed. He filled the room with
robust wail and unavailing regret.
After that he tried to dispel his _ennui_ with one of the doctor's old
felt hats that hung on a chair; but the hair oil with which it was
saturated changed his mind.
The doctor had magenta hair, and to tone it down so that it would not
raise the rate of fire insurance on his office, he used to execute some
studies on it in oil--bear's oil.
This gave his hair a rich mahogany shade, and his hat smelled and looked
like an oil refinery.
That is the reason Nemesis spared the hat, and ate a couple of
porousplasters that his master was going to use on a case of croup.
At that time the doctor came in, and the dog ran to him with a glad cry of
pleasure, rubbing his cold nose against his master's hand. The able
veterinarian spoke roughly to Nemesis, and throwing a cigar-stub at him,
broke two of the animal's delicate legs.
[Illustration: BUSTLE AND CONFUSION.]
After that there was a low discordant murmur and the angry hum of medical
works, lung-testers, glass jars containing tumors and other bric-a-brac,
paper-weights and Italian grayhound bisecting the orbit of a redheaded
horse-physician with dude shoes.
When the police came in, it was found that Nemesis had jumped through a
glass door and escaped on two legs and his ear.
Out through the autumnal haze, across the intervening plateau, over the
low foot-hills, and up the Medicine Bow Range, on and ever onward sped the
timid, grieved and broken-hearted pup, accumulating with wonderful
eagerness the intervening distance between himself and the cruel promoter
of the fly-blister and lingering death.
How often do we thoughtlessly grieve the hearts of those who love us, and
drive forth into the pitiless world those who would gladly lick our hands
with their warm loving tongues, or warm their cold noses in the meshes of
our necks.
How prone we are to forget the devotion of a dumb brute that thoughtlessly
eats our lace lambrequins, and ere we have stopped to consider our mad
course, we have driven the loving heart and the warm wet tongue and the
cold little black nose out of our home-life, perhaps into the cold, cold
grave or the bleak and relentless pound.
Chinese Justice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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