FROM A SUBURBAN BALCONY

Evening Star, Issue 19002, 25 July 1925, Page 2

FROM A SUBURBAN BALCONY

Tin? other day, coming up the road on the way to my balcony, a dog came running towards me. Ho was limping on three logs and holding up the other. At first I thought some conveyance had run over it, and bruised or broken it. On nearer view I discovered it was inserted in a leather strap fastened round his neck in such a position that ho could not get the leg out of it. He looked at mo appealingly as if beseeching my help. I spoke a kindly word to him, whereupon he threw himself down on the ground, rolled on his back, as if trying to persuade mo to loose him from this horrible thing that held him captive. First he tried his own skill, rubbed the fetter on the ground, but all in vain. Then ho lay still for a minute, looked at mo with those soft brown eyes that took Matthew Arnold captive in Geist, whom he has immortalised in verse—Geist with

That liquid melancholy eye -Front whoso pathetic soul-fed springs Seemed surging the Virgilean cry— The sense of tears in mortal things. I was very tempted to respond to this dog’s mute appeal for help. But then he was not my dog, and I guessed the reason why he was hobbled up after this fashion. So I had, much against my feelings, to resist his pleadings and leave him to his torment. I would have loved to loose him and let him go, but—well, of that more anon.

Tho incident set mo to think about dogs that I have known and dogs J have read about. What wonderful creatures they are! It almost makes one a believer in the Theosophist doctrine of the re-births of human souls into animal bodies, except that in the case of many dogs it would bo too complimentary to tho humans. There is no animal comes so close to man ns the dog. ■ Indeed, In many cases, in their love and loyalty to their masters, they have never been surpassed, and seldom equalled, by men and women, “ Hev’ a dog, miss,” says Bob Taken, in ‘ The Mill on the Floss,’ to Maggie Tulliverj “they’re better friends than any Christian.” So they are within their limits. Of course, there are odds in dogs as well as deacons. Stevenson, in one of his essays, sums up their defects. The dog, he says, is greedy of notice, does not like ridicule, is often jealous, and radically devoid of truth, “He lies with his eyes. He lies with his tail. He lies with his protesting paw. And when he rattles the dish ami scratches at the door his purpose is other than it seems.” These sentiments arc hardly worthy of Stevenson, and are certainly unfair to most of our canine friends. I find myself far more in sympathy with Maeterlinck. Writing l On the Death of a Little Dog,’ he says the word friend does not exactly depict his affectionate worship. He loves us and reveres ns as though wo had drawn him out of nothing. He is, before all in creation, “ full of gratitude. . . . He is an intimate impassioned slave, whom nothing discourages, nothing repels, whose ardent trust and love nothing can impair. He has . .

surrendered himself to us, body ancl f-oul, without afterthought, without any intention to go back, reserving his independence, his instinct, and his character only tho small part indispensable to tho continuation of the life prescribed by Nature.” That is a much more sympathetic, and therefore hotter, interpretation of the real dog than the harsher judgment of Stevenson. * * * * Iho mention of these two writers suggests dogs of literature. What a book—books, indeed—might 'he written about them I How many of our greatest authors have dogs running about somewhere in their pages and poems! In George Eliot’s there is a whole set of Poyscr dogs, and Bartle Massey’s Vixen and .Adam Bede’s Gyp, and, best ol all, Bob Jaken’s Mumps, in ‘The Mill on the hloss.’ And then we have Sir AA alter Scott saying “ the misery of keeping n dog is his dying so soon. But, to ho sure, if he lived for fifty years, and then died, what would become of me?” It was his interest in a miscellaneous cluster of farm dogs that once onahlcd his host, a shame-faced, shy, country yeoman, to put aside his constraint, whispering to a friend, as he waiehed Scott chumming up with the dogs: “.fust see! Dc’il hue me if I bo a hit loared lor him the noo.” Them wc have tho sketches of them in Lockhart’s ‘ Bite ’ of him; and Washington Irving fells of a ramble he-oncc had with Scott. They were accompanied by the old staghound Maida, Hamlet (a black greyhound), and Fineito, the parlor lavonto, and others. They gambolled about, the younger ones, playing tricks wilh the staid old Maida, and trying to upset his dignity. Occasionally, when they got too obstreperous, Maida iron Id turn hie one of them into tho dust, and jook up at his master as much as to say; “You see, sir, ,| can’t help this nonsense!” Scott was very amused with their antics, and entered into a humorous disquisition of their frolics and philosophy. One ot Mrs Carlvie’s inimitable letters begins thus: “Oh, Lord! 1 forgot to tel] you 1 have a little dog, and Mr C. accepted it with amiability.”. Carlyle’s attitude towards it is one of the most pathetic things in the history of the grim, gnarled old Sago of Chelsea. In iho annotations which lie makes on one of Ins wife's letters we !ind him writing; “Wo had many walks together, he and I, for the next, ten years: a great deal of small traffic; poor little animal, so loyal, so loving, so naive and true, and what sair intellect he had!” A butcher’s cart put an end to the creature. The old sago writes that he “ could not have believed the grief it caused him. Our last midnight walk together is still painful to my thought—little lino white speck of late. Fidelity, and Feeling, girdled by the Darkness of Night Eternal,” It is like a violet,—fit is tenderness of tho grim old sage blooming in the crack oi a granite rock. It, recalls the pathetic incident that Lord Morloy records ns lie doses his ‘ Recollections.’ He is out for a walk on an autumn evening. He has been thinking over a world drowned at iho moment' in blood and tears, and wondering if, after all, the gospel according to tho Darwins ami Spensers and Renans is any improvement on that of the various churches. “ Now and then I paused as 1 sauntered slow over the fading heather. My little humble friend on his haunches looked wistfully up, eager to resume hi.-, endless hunt after he knows mil wha;, just like tho cloistered metaphysicians. So to my

house in the falling twilight.” And thus lie'takes his farewell of the world. But I am wandering, and so I go back to the dog with which I started. *‘* * • # It was easy to divine the reason why he was hobbled in this way. Doubtless he had been abusing his liberty, chasing the poultry or hunting wild after sheep or cattle, lie was a collie,

and that would have made him useless, and might end his days in a tragedy. I bethink me here of an experience of my own in my boyish days. I happened to possess a dog, half collie,, half terrier. We wore great pals. One of his accomplishments was eating goosci berries. It was comical to see him sitting beside the bush, carefully picking I and plucking the ripest berries and solemnly spitting out the husks like any Christian! After I left home and went to business it puzzled him why I did not take him with me. He thought at first, | I imagine, that some trick was being I played upon him, or that I was in ’ hiding somewhere. Ho made periodical i searches all round about the house,! and especially in my bedroom. But in 1 vain. Left to himself, bo had to find something, to fill in the vacant hours, i Ho grew interested in poultry. They : were stupid things, and he liked to play . tricks" upon them. Thrcatenings and j floggings followed. He concluded that ■ these fools of fowls were the cause of j his misfortunes, so ho began a policy of. extermination wherever lie could Audi them, at homo or abroad. He had been | .accustomed to go with me on shooting j expeditions. There was no one to go j with now. It was a fine day, and, like 1 every true Briton, ho must kill something, and there was nothing handier than the chickens and ducks. Thus, liberty abused brought its punishment, j The end of those things is death. By | a harsh irony of fate his execution lell . upon me. “Will all great Ncptupc’s j ocean wash the blood clean from my ! hand?” I have ever since had an un- j easy feeling that I am a sort of unshriven murderer- 1 « » * * Ail of which is a paraiilc, and a parable of what? It is very obvious. Wo resent limitations. We rebel against | laws that seem to cripple and confine t us. This poor collie clog could not j understand why he was hobbled up in . this fashion, and that, too, by those | whom he had reckoned friends. And j our children do the samo And when | we become men and women we find our- ! selves still under a reign of law. But in these days “ there is no king in Israel.” Philosophers, novelists, poets , demand self-expression. Man-made | laws have no eternal sanction, and | there is no oilier sort. Wo are all aui- j mals, differing only in degree from our i ancestors below ns. Why repress these lower yearnings of the senses, since they are natural, a real part oi our-; selves? The law of Nature, the cosmic urge, is self-expression. “A suppressed desire lurks in the subconscious to wreak mental and moral havoc. We become moan and furtive, the prey oi obscene imaginings.” So let ns not be j the slaves of conventions, hobbled by ■ laws that are merely the product ol priests and kings in ages gone by. This is the teaching filtering down into the j mass mind through novels, philosophies, and poems. Against it we may offer this dog parable as a truer interpretation of the facta of life. Man docs not make laws. He only discovers those already made. He does not make the law of gravitation, lie finds it here, and must adjust himself to it or die. So of all the other laws of Nature. They arc not meant to hobble ns, except for onr good, as the strap hobbles tho collie. When we pass up higher into the moral and spiritual sphere it is the samo. Law rules there. Our I strength lies not in rebelling against it, j but in obeying it. Tho Laws of Sinai are not true because they were given there. They existed before that. They are written in man’s own nature. “To resent them is more foolish than to complain of the steel bars of the menagerie that come between us and the wild beasts.” A higher wisdom hobbled the dog for bis own good as well as the safety of other lives. And a Higher Wisdom docs the same with ns. We may rebel against them. But if wo do wc only beat ourselves to death against the bars of life and destroy our liberty in tho very act of asserting it. Ron.