The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 25, November, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 25, November, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
he usually did, the spaniel circled away to where it narrowed, and
leaped across it in his run. Then St. Remi, drawing a pistol from his
holsters, fired at and shot his faithful companion, averting his eyes
as he touched the fatal trigger, and galloping rapidly away from the
death-cry that smote upon his ear; and, as he dashed the spurs into his
reeking horse, he invoked maledictions on the money which was the cause
of this unfortunate journey. The money! but where was it? Suddenly he
pulled up his harassed steed, and the unhappy truth flashed upon him:
he had left his treasure by the way-side well, and had shot his
faithful dog for trying to remind him of it. Riding back to the well
with mad speed, he found by traces of blood upon the path that the poor
spaniel had dragged himself thither again to guard his master's gold to
the last. There he found him, stretched out beside the bag of money,
with just strength enough left to raise his head towards his master,
with a look of forgiveness, ere he died.
The chronicler does not state what M. St. Remi did with all that
money,--though we may be safe in supposing that he very exactly knew;
but we would fain hope that he expended a moiety of it in founding a
retreat for decayed dogs, as a monument to the poor little spaniel so
faithful to him in life and in death.
Sporting dogs,--the setter, the pointer, the fox-hound, and all the
several varieties of hound, have had their historians, from Dame
Juliana Berners to Peter Beckford, and that more recent Peter whose
patronymic was Hawker; while, on our side of the Atlantic, the late
"Frank Forester" has reduced kennel-practice to a system from which the
Nimrod of the ramrod may not profitably depart. Apart from history,
however, and from didactic argument, the individual trails of dogs
remarkable in their day have but too rarely been recorded. Certainly
the shepherd's colley has been admirably individualized by the Ettrick
Shepherd; but many a terrier--"a fellow of infinite fancy"--has passed
through the world's worry without ever seeing his name in
print,--unless, indeed, he happened to have fallen among thieves, and
found himself lamp-posted accordingly,--has passed the grizzle-muzzle
period of doghood unbiographied, and gone down to his last burrow
unsung.
Among the regrets with which we are saddled for our omissions, not the
least of mine is now galling me for having neglected to reduce to
writing, on the spot, curious facts which fell under my immediate
notice in the course of many years' companionship with a somewhat
miscellaneous assortment of canine friends,--
"The little dogs and all,
Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart."
Nevertheless, I will endeavor to bring together in this paper such
stray reminiscences of doggery in general as may occur to me while I
write, illustrating the subject, as I proceed, with occasional passages
from the careers, of humble, but eccentric individuals of the race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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