Ernest Gambier-Parry

“ What happiness was to be had in life; what sport and splendid fun—sport all day long; fun without end! Did not the morning begin with a game?—the dog lying down in one corner of the hall, fixing his master with his eye as he appeared, and then, after pausing a while as if to say, “Are you ready?” launching himself full tilt, till he was brought up in a final leap against his master’s chest, 165 full five feet from the ground. Of course the whole hall was in a smother every time, with mats and rugs all out of place upon the slippery floor. ”

“ His doings, in some mysterious way, frequently reflected the colour of the day; and his spirits varied with those of his master. The sympathy of dogs is no modern discovery, but as old as their comradeship with man; and thus this one varied his ways according as times were good or bad, or trials, mental or bodily, chanced to be the same. On this brilliant morning man and dog had caught the light of the sun and the gladness thereof, and the young dog played with his master’s hand as he swung along, and barked and jumped for very love of life. ”

“ Here many of the meadows were thirty acres and over in extent, flat as any floor, with great elm trees in their hedgerows. They were untenanted now by sheep or 21 cattle, for these had been driven off the night before to higher ground, by men who kept an eye upon the weather. The virgin surface of the snow lay glittering gold and silver in the early morning sun, with here and there, as a contrast, the long shadows of the limbs of a great oak or elm, cast as though some one had traced its pattern for fun with a brushful of the purest cobalt. ”

“ When the tide, whigh is only slight in the Red Sea, runs out, these lagoons are left exposed to the burning rays of the sun, and as they are full of filth and refuse of all sorts, the overpowering stench that arises from the foul black mud, festering and fermenting in the heat, simply defies description. The most unhealthy time of year is from August to the end of October, and during this period the battalion of Marines quartered here since May last had not unfrequently twenty per cent, of their strength sick ”

“ His pluck and courage are almost proverbial. In many a case the odds against him seem not to make the slightest difference: he will fight on to the end; let his master only lead, he will follow to the death.
And it is here that his fidelity attains its very pinnacle. Faithful unto death! Again and again, in innumerable instances, he has shown his faithfulness long after the one he loved was dead. The dog in the mediæval legend that dug his master’s grave, covered him with moss and leaves, and then watched there for seven years, until he died himself, has found many a parallel in real life. ”

“ And yet there we were, a picked force, armed with every scientific means to effect our end—everything, from an air balloon, with its gas compressed and brought all the way from Chatham, to mule batteries of screw-guns, Gardners, and rockets, and to rifles of the most perfect pattern and greatest rapidity of fire. And all this to war against what? A foe worthy of our steel? ”

“ But there came the glad spring and the long summer days; the one gave a flavour to the other and created a love for both, and deep down in the heart where that love burnt bright was the pride of his calling, the honour of tending sheep. Soft jobs were not for men—or manly dogs.
Of course Murphy could not be a sheep-dog; that is, unless Job Nutt had a mind to make him. ”

“ We had to wait a long while before our tents made their appearance, and it was ten o'clock before the first string of camels arrived with a part of them. We were all soon at work, though, and in a couple of hours we had transformed our bare patch of sand into a smart camp, all alive with the hum of many voices and the bustle of men getting everything ship-shape. ”

“ To conceive of a world with all the attributes of beauty yet without flowers is impossible. To realise a world full of music and song yet without birds may be possible, but transcends the powers of most minds. To attempt to believe in the happiness of a world where companionship is to be looked for and reunion is promised, yet where the companionship of dogs is denied, is to strain the belief of some to the uttermost and not improbably to fail. ”

“ It always is more or less rough in the Red Sea, and there is almost sure to be a strong wind blowing either up or down it. I know this time the sea was quite high enough to make some of us feel very uncomfortable. We had lost sight of the coast since leaving the Gulf of Suez, but as the sun went down in a mist on the evening of the 6th of March, there stood up against it the sharp peak of some great mountain, and then we knew that the end of our journey was approaching, and that the next morning would see us saying good-bye to the comforts of board ship-life, for we should be off Suakin. ”

“ To look ahead in the hey-day of youth is to look forward to unclouded happiness. And, no doubt, to Murphy and those of his own age, the fact that the summer waned and that autumn followed, when leaves fell mysteriously from the trees and there were sporting scents in the air, made little difference to their outlook. Happiness had no relation to the seasons: they were all good in their turn. ”

“ But as man and dog worked further still, for very joy of the wind and the snow and love for the elements at their worst—the horses struggling, the waggoners calling to them loudly and urging them to put their best into it, with many a crack of the whip—there suddenly fell a lull, and for a moment there was peace. ”

“ Is it possible that all these marvellous qualities and characteristics, gathered together into one dumb animal, are to pass away and to have no place in the larger circuit of life? Are all these consolations that this animal, and this animal alone among the so-called dumb, is capable of bringing—are all the influences for good that he is granted the power of exercising upon the mind, the spirit, and the very soul of man—to be accounted of no worth; to be merely so many items to be used up in the furtherance of a great scheme and plan ”

“ From this last there sounded at intervals the music of bells, chiming, or ringing solemnly, and beneath its shadow slept other folk, who had once walked the world with these same dogs of many generations, earning epitaphs no better, if as good, as they. To lie in either, seeing what falls to some, might well be thought a stroke of luck for dog or man. ”

“ The lives of the Man and the Dog are found to be ever intertwined. Yet is there always this besides—the rift in the lute and the familiar refrain, that the life of the dog shall be short, and that Man shall go on his way with his head bent, till such time as he shall become rich once more in the love of a new-found friend—if that be always possible. ”

“ To thrash him would be almost an act of cruelty by a dog of such a temperament: it might make him more nervous than ever, even if he could be caught for the purpose and made to understand the rudiments of cause and effect. Dan had learnt to “come and be thrashed,” when such was necessary and he was summoned in those most ominous of words. It might be possible to teach Murphy in the same way: dogs, somehow or other, were almost universally capable of differentiating between justice and injustice, and bore no resentment. ”

“ Uniformity is often but to bring down to one dead level, to crush true liberty and freedom, to force unnatural growth, and to give this a trend untrue. Education on such lines seems curiously false to many minds, as well as stultifying.
Scot, who had no appearance of a 153 sheep-dog—that is, as his class are generally portrayed in coloured prints—might possibly have been brought up as a water-spaniel, or he might have been the darling of a semi-detached villa and have learnt to walk drab, unlovely streets without endangering his life: it is all a matter of education, fortified by environment. ”

“ To the southward there would be protection; life there would be preserved: here it was impossible—for birds. “Keep low; press on!” Victory shall be to the strongest: the weak shall fall in this pitiless wind, and the snow shall cover the dead, but in the end there shall be a better life for some. ”

“ There is little need to say much here of the dog’s power of love, for every one is aware of it, or may have been made richer by it in his life. The old saying of 219 centuries ago still holds good, and “the dog is the only animal in creation that luvs you more than he luvs himself.” There are those who assert that all love is divine in origin. If this be so, and the dog could be considered to have a religion, then undoubtedly his religion is the love of man. We are brought face to face here with a passion that, in the dog, knows no limits, and that is apparently incapable of alienation. ”

“ The man, the woman, and the child have undoubtedly gone to the dog’s help at the risk of their own lives on many an occasion; but so also has the dog risked his for the sake of the man—not from any moral claim, not because life is a precious thing and must be saved, not because of that power which impels, and whose chief gift is the sense of after-satisfaction that comes even to the most disinterested; such things lie necessarily beyond the reach of the dog mind. ”

“ The vast majority of Christian men are enabled to ride out the storms of life without confidence wholly giving way, and with the first of sheet-anchors fixed in what is felt to be the best of holding ground. When, however, we turn to the possible future status of the dog, there is no sheet-anchor, and the holding ground is indifferent. Yet, in considering the case of the man and the dog, we are not left without a certain measure of support equally applicable to both. The spirit definable as the immediate apprehension of the mind without reasoning—the spirit of intuition—aids us on either hand. ”

“ It was too hot in the day to go far—that is, for those in life who can choose 150 their own time. So the dog and the man took their walks late, and prolonged them to the hour when the ruddy moon rose solemnly into the sky over the woods and set out on its low, summer curve to the west. ”

“ About a year after Murphy’s arrival, Dan was gathered to his forefathers, and there was mourning throughout the house for many days. To one at least, if not to more, Alphonse Karr’s remark held good—On n’a dans la vie qu’un chien—and Dan was that dog. His life had been long; he had won all hearts; he had done many wonderful things, besides fulfilling his duties as a faithful constable of the place in which his lot was cast; and now, loving and beloved, he had died. Such were the data from which his epitaph had to be evolved. Man could desire no better. ”

“ It is here, in the animal kingdom, that the action of the dog once again stands first; for what powers of modification and influence can transcend those which effect a frequent and practical impression upon the actions of this so-called King,—by appealing, as the dog often does, to man’s moral sense; by claiming love outside man’s own circle, in return for love given without stint ”

“ They betoken nervousness, of course—inherent nervousness, probably. A cruel injustice had been done by this dumb thing, and by one of Us. Give him up! Clearly everything most prized was at stake, and claimed the exact opposite.
Why should a different justice be the lot of a dog to that meted out to a man? Is the superiority all one way? Each man knows in his heart that it is not; that the dog is often the better of the two. ”

“ It is time to look at the dog himself a little closer, and see what characteristics he can bring forward in support of hopes that many human beings entertain on his behalf.
Here is a dumb animal that, long before the dawn of history, is known to have been man’s close companion. Step by step, we see him advancing with those to whom he is linked, until he raises himself immeasurably above all other animals, and takes his place pre-eminently as the friend of man. ”

“ And the fun of it all is that Man with his self-assurance, and that limited vision of his of which he seems sometimes completely unaware, thinks that he is training the dog, whereas the dog is perfectly capable, as will be shown, of at least in some directions training him. Thus, where differences arise, Man jumps to his conclusions and claims his prerogative. It is a sorry business when an all-too-hasty punishment follows, as it often does, for Man—so Murphy used to say—would find himself very frequently to be wrong. ”