The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays: 1909Bierce, Ambrose
Philosophy
The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays: 1909
Bierce, Ambrose
Essays
Finally this amusing illogician, this type and example of the female
controversialist, has the hardihood to hope that there may be fathers
who can see their children the the horrible death of hydrophobia without
wishing "to exile man's best ideal of fidelity from the hearthstones of
civilization." If we must have an "ideal of fidelity" why not find it,
not in the dog that kills the child, but in the father that kills the
dog. The profit of maintaining a standard and pattern of the virtues (at
considerable expense in the case of this insatiable canine consumer) may
be great, but are we so hard pushed that we must go to the animals for
it? In life and letters are there no men and women whose names kindle
enthusiasm and emulation? Is fidelity, is devotion, is self-sacrifice
unknown among ourselves? As a model of the higher virtues why will not
one's mother serve at a pinch? And what is the matter with Miss Guiney
herself? She is faithful, at least to dogs, whatever she may be to
the hundreds of American children inevitably foredoomed to a death of
unthinkable agony.
There is perhaps a hope that when the sun's returning flame shall gild
the hither end of the thirtieth century this savage and filthy brute,
the dog, will have ceased to "banquet on through a whole year" of human
fat and lean; that he will have been gathered to his variously unworthy
fathers to give an account of the deeds done in body of man. In the
meantime, those of us who have not the enlightened understanding to be
enamored of him may endure with such fortitude as we can command
his feats of tooth among the shins and throats of those who have; we
ourselves are so few that there is a strong numerical presumption of
personal immunity.
It is well to have a clear understanding of such inconveniences as
may be expected to ensue from dog-bites. That inconveniences and even
discomforts do sometimes flow from, or at least follow, the mischance of
being bitten by dogs, even the sturdiest champion of "man's best friend"
will admit when not heated fay controversy. True, he is disposed to
sympathy for those incurring the inconveniences and discomforts, but
against apparent incompassion may be offset his indubitable sympathy
with the dog. No one is altogether heartless.
Amongst the several disadvantages of a close personal connection with
the canine tooth, the disorder known as hydrophobia has long held an
undisputed primacy. The existence of dus ailment is attested by so many
witnesses, many of whom, belonging to the profession of medicine, speak
with a certain authority, that even the breeders and lovers of snap-dogs
are compelled reluctantly to concede it, though as a rule they stoutly
deny that it is imparted by the dog. In their view, hydrophobia is a
theory, not a condition. The patient imagines himself to have it, and
acting upon that unsupported assumption or hypothesis, suffers and dies
in the attempt to square his conduct with his opinions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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