Lucretia soon after this began to be restless. He would come to my
casement and lift up his voice, and howl into the bosom of the silent
night. At first I thought that he had found some one in distress, or
wanted to get me out of doors and save my life. I went out several nights
in a weird costume that I had made up of garments belonging to different
members of my family. I dressed carefully in the dark and stole out to
kill the assassin referred to by Lucretia, but he was not there. Then the
faithful animal would run up to me and with almost human, pleading eyes,
bark and run away toward a distant alley. I immediately decided that some
one was suffering there. I had read in books about dogs that led their
masters away to the suffering and saved people's lives; so, when Lucretia
came to me with his great, honest eyes and took little mementoes out of
the calf of my leg, and then galloped off seven or eight blocks, I
followed him in the chill air of night and my Mosaic clothes. I wandered
away to where the dog stopped behind a livery stable, and there, lying in
a shuddering heap on the frosty ground, lay the still, white features of a
soup bone that had outlived its usefulness.
On the way back, I met a physician who had been up town to swear in an
American citizen who would vote twenty-one years later, if he lived. The
physician stopped me and was going to take me to the home of the
friendless, when he discovered who I was.
[Illustration: EXCITING PUBLIC CURIOSITY.]
You wrap a tall man, with a William H. Seward nose, in a flannel robe, cut
plain, and then put a plug hat and a sealskin sacque and Arctic overshoes
on him, and put him out in the street, under the gaslight, with his trim,
purple ankles just revealing themselves as he madly gallops after a
hydrophobia infested dog, and it is not, after all, surprising that
people's curiosity should be a little bit excited.
After I had introduced myself to the physician and asked him for a cigar,
explaining that I could not find any in the clothes I had on, I asked him
about Lucretia Borgia. I told the doctor how Lucretia seemed restless
nights and nervous and irritable days, and how he seemed to be almost a
mental wreck, and asked him what the trouble was.
He said it was undoubtedly “insomnia.” He said that it was a bad case of
it, too. I told him I thought so myself. I said I didn't mind the insomnia
that Lucretia had so much as I did my own. I was getting more insomnia on
my hands than I could use.
He gave me something to administer to Lucretia. He said I must put it in a
link of sausage and leave the sausage where it would appear that I didn't
want the dog to get it, and then Lucretia would eat it greedily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account