What the Animals Do and SayFollen, Eliza Lee Cabot
History
What the Animals Do and Say
Follen, Eliza Lee Cabot
Animals -- Juvenile fiction; Mothers and sons -- Juvenile fiction; Natural history -- Juvenile fiction
"The story I shall tell you now seems to show that dogs have good
hearts, and are compassionate and magnanimous. A dog was placed to
watch a piece of ground, perhaps a garden. A boy ran across the
forbidden place. The dog chased him. The boy, greatly frightened,
ran very fast, fell, and broke his leg. The dog, when he came up and
heard the boy's cries, did not touch him, but ran up to the passers
by, and barked till he attracted their attention, and brought some
one to the aid of the poor boy, who could not move.
The faithful creature had performed his duty in driving away
intruders; but he had too good a heart, and was too generous to hurt
a fallen enemy. In the account I read he was called a Christian dog.
His conduct would be a good example to all Christians.
I have now a story of a roguish dog that I think we could not praise
so much for his goodness as for his cunning. A gentleman in Paris
was in the habit of crossing every day one of the bridges over the
Seine, on his way to his place of business. One day, a very dirty
poodle dog rubbed himself so against his boots as to make it
necessary to get a man, who sat at one end of the bridge with
blacking, to clean them. The next day the same thing occurred, and
again and again, till, at last, the gentleman suspected that the
bootblack had taught the dog this trick, in order by that means to
get customers. He watched, and saw, when he approached the bridge,
Master Poodle go and roll himself in a mud puddle, and then come and
rub himself against his boots. The gentleman accused the bootblack
of the trick. After a while the man laughed, and confessed his
roguery."
"That poodle was a brick," said Harry.
"One more story of dogs. A surgeon of Leeds, in England, found a
little spaniel who had been lamed. The surgeon carried the poor
animal home, bandaged up his leg, and after two or three days turned
him out. The dog returned to the surgeon's house every morning till
his leg was perfectly well.
At the end of several months, the spaniel again presented himself,
bringing another dog who had also been lamed, and intimating, as
plainly as piteous and intelligent looks could intimate, that he
desired the same kind assistance to be rendered to his friend as had
been bestowed upon himself.
But I am forgetting poor puss.
Mr. W., a friend of mine, whose word might be taken for any thing,
told me an extraordinary anecdote of a cat, which he said he knew to
be true.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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