Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

“ When Commencement was over, and the town quiet and a little dull, something of a festive nature was thought good for Adah; and the doctor, who came only as a matter of occasional ceremony now, to see his patient running away from him, proposed a party; for he was not an imaginative man, and could only suggest the conventional.
"Something to take her mind off the dog for a little," he said. "We must avoid anything resembling a fixed idea."
"Love is always a fixed idea," replied the professor of psychology, smiling. "But you may try, doctor."
"I will arx Loveliness," said the child quietly. ”

“ There, stretched, bound, gagged, gasping, doomed to a doom which the readers of this page would forbid this pen to describe, lay the silver Yorkshire, kissing his vivisector's hand.
In the past few months Loveliness had known to the uttermost the matchless misery of the lost dog (for he had been sold and restolen more than once) ; he had known the miseries of cold, of hunger, of neglect, of homelessness, and other torments of which it is as well not to think; the sufferings which ignorance imposes upon animals. ”

“ Now the professor began to do strange and secretive things. Unknown to his wife, unsuspected by his fading child, he began to cause the laboratories of the city and its environs to be searched. In the process, curious trades developed themselves to his astonished ignorance: the tricks of boys who supply the material of anguish; the trade of the janitor who sells it to the demonstrator; the trade of the brute who allures his superior, the dog, to the lairs of medical students. Dark arts started to the foreground, like imps around Mephistopheles concealed. ”

“ When night came she would ask for the Yorkshire's bed to be put beside her own, and with trembling fingers would draw up the crimson blankets over the crimson mattress, as if the dog had been between them. Then she would ask the question that haunted her most:—
"Mamma, who will put Loveliness into a little baxet to sleep, and cover him up? Papa, Papa, will they be kind to Loveliness?"
Stormy nights and days were always the hardest.
"Will Loveliness be out and get wet? Will he shiver like 'e black dog I saw to-day? Will he have warm milk for his supper? ”

“ Loveliness was an obedient little fellow always; but he did not reply. The maid called again; she examined the front yard and the premises,—slowly, for she was afraid to go in and tell. With the imbecility of the timid and the erring, she took too much time in a fruitless and unintelligent search before she went, trembling, into the house. Kathleen felt that this was the greatest emergency that had occurred since the baby was burned. She went straight to the master's door.
"God have mercy on me, but I've lost the little dog, sir!"
The professor wheeled around in his study chair. ”

“ Loveliness sighed one of the long sighs of perfect content recognized by all owners and lovers of dogs as one of the happiest sounds in this sad world, and laid his cheek to hers quietly. He asked nothing more of life. He had forgotten the world and all that was therein. He looked no longer for the cabman, the newsboy, or the carrier, and the man with the eyebrows had gone away. The universe did not exist; he and she were together. Heaven had happened. The [Pg 7] dog glanced through half-closed, blissful eyes at the yellow hair—"eighteen carats fine"—that fell against his silver bangs. ”

“ I am Professor Premice, of the Chair of Mental Philosophy,—Professor Theophrastus Premice." He felt for his cards, but he had used the last one in his wallet.
"You might be, and you mightn't," replied the janitor grimly. "I never heard tell of you that I know of. My orders are not to admit, and I do not admit."
"You are unlawfully detaining and torturing my dog!" gasped the professor. "I demand my property at once!"
"We have such a lot of these cases," answered the janitor wearily. "We hain't got your dog. We don't take gentlemen's dogs, nor ladies' pets. And we always etherize. ”

“ Loveliness had sunk out of sight like forgotten suffering in a scene of joy.
In the window seat, propped with white pillows, [Pg 20] "lame and lovely," Adah sat. The empty embroidered gray cushion lay beside her. Sometimes she patted the red puppies softly with one thin little hand; she allowed no one else to touch the cushion.
"Till Loveliness comes home," she said. In the window, silent, pale, and seeing everything, she watched. But Loveliness did not come home.
"TILL LOVELINESS COMES HOME"
The pitiful thing was that the child herself was so changed. ”

“ Loveliness had always shown a genius for the English language. He could not speak it, but he tried harder than any other dog I ever knew to do so; and he grew to understand with ease an incredibly large part of the usual conversation of the family. It could never be proved that he followed—or did not follow—the professor of psychology in a discussion on the Critique of Pure Reason ”

“ A little girl had come into the room, a girl of between five and six years, but so small that one would scarcely have guessed her to be four,—a beautiful child, but transparent of coloring, and bearing in her delicate face the pathetic patience which only sick children, of all human creatures, ever show. ”

“ This luxurious, daintily fed little creature, who had never known an hour's want nor any deprivation that he could remember, led by the [Pg 9] blind instinct of starving, savage ancestors skulking in forests where the claw and tooth of every living thing were against every other, conscientiously sought to bury, against future exigencies, any kind of food for which he had no appetite. The remnants of his dog biscuit, his saucer of weak tea, an unpalatable dinner, alike received the treatment given to the bare bone of his forefathers when it was driven into the ground. ”

“ Kathleen put the little dog down forcibly from the arms of the child, who wailed at the separation. She called back over the balusters: "Love-li-ness! Good-by, Loveliness! When we're grown up, we'll always be togever, Loveliness!"
The dog barked rebelliously for a few minutes; then sighed, and accepted the situation. He ran back and picked up the pamphlet which Kathleen had dropped, and carried it upstairs to the professor's study, where he laid it on the lowest shelf of the revolving bookcase. The professor glanced at the dog-eared pages and smiled. ”

“ With the suspended scalpel in his hand, the demonstrator turned impatiently.
"It's a row in the corridor," said one of the students. "We hope you won't delay for that, doctor. It's nothing of any consequence. Please go ahead."
But the locked door of the laboratory shook violently, and rattled in unseen hands. Voices clashed from the outside. The disturbance increased.
"Open! Open the door!" Heavy blows fell upon the panels.
"In the name of humanity, in the name of mercy, open this door!"
"It must be some of those fanatics," said the operator, laying down his instrument. "Where is the janitor? ”

“ Is there anybody to rub him dry and cuddle my Loveliness?"
To divert the child from her grief proved impossible. They took her somewhere, in the old, idle effort to change the place and help the pain; but she mourned so, "because he might come home, and nobody see him but me," that they brought her back.
The president of the university, who was a dogless and childless man, presented the bereaved household with a mongrel white puppy, purchased [Pg 22] under the amiable impression that it was of a rare, Parisian breed. The distinguished man cherished the ignorant hope of bestowing consolation. ”

“ He was kept as sweet and clean as his little mistress, and he had no playfellow except herself, and never went away from home unless at the end of a gray satin ribbon leash. At all events, the two would occupy the same pillow, and all idle effort to struggle with this fact had ceased in the household. ”

“ For the first time in his life, this eminent man, wise in the wisdom of the world of mind, and half educated in the practical affairs of the world of matter, studied for himself the authenticated records of the torments imposed upon dumb animals in the name of science. ”

“ Then he saw that she too had not slept.
"Adah has such dreams," she explained; "cruel things,—all the same kind."
"About the dog?"
"Always about the dog. I have been sitting up with her. She is—not as strong as—not quite"—
The professor set his teeth when he heard the mother's moan. When she had sunk into broken rest he stole back to his study, and locked out of sight the pamphlet which Loveliness had chewed. ”

“ The assistant entered through the laboratory door at this moment, bearing something which he held straight out before him. The students, on tiered and curving benches, looked down from their amphitheatre, lightly, as they had been trained to look.
"It is needless to say," proceeded the lecturer, "that the subject will be mercifully disposed of as soon as the demonstration is completed. And we shall operate with the greatest tenderness, as we always do. Gentlemen, I am reminded of a story"—
The demonstrator indulged in a little persiflage at this point, raising a laugh among the class ”

“ Loveliness had. It bade fair, at the time of our story, to outlive every other name. [Pg 4]
The little dog had both friends and acquaintances on the street where the professor lived; and he watched for them from his cushion in the window, hours at a time. There was the cabman, the academic-looking cabman, who was the favorite of the faculty, and who hurrahed and snapped his whip at the Yorkshire as he passed by; there was the newsboy who brought the Sunday papers, and who whistled at Loveliness, and made faces, and called him Mop. ”

“ People of a low type, those whose imagination was bounded by menial similes, or persons of that too ready inclination to the humorous which fails to consider the possible injustice or unkindness that it may involve, had in Mop's infancy found a base pleasure in attaching to him such epithets as window-washer, scrubbing-brush, feather-duster, and footmuff. ”

“ The satin cushion with the embroidered puppies was carried out among the blushing weigelia bushes; and the twain lived and loved and played, from day-start to twilight, in the live, midsummer air.
THROUGH THE BENDING SHRUBBERY
Sometimes she was overheard conversing with the terrier,—long, confidential talks, with which no third person intermeddled.
"Dearness! Daintiness! Loveliness! Did you have a little baxet with blankets while you were away? Preciousness! Did they cut you meat and warm you soup for you, and comfort you? Did they ever let you out to shi-shiver in 'e wet and cold? ”

“ The pamphlet was one of the innumerable throng issued by some philanthropic society devoted to improving the condition of animals. [Pg 13]
When Kathleen came downstairs she found the dog standing at the front door, patiently asking that it might be opened for him. She went down the steps; for it was the rule of the house never to allow the most helpless member of the family at liberty unguarded. The evening was soft, and the maid stood looking idly about. A man in a yellow jersey, and with straight, black eyebrows, was on the other side of the street ”

“ I have no time to lose. There is one waiting for this little creature who"—
He did not finish his sentence, but went out from among them. As he passed with the shorn and quivering dog in his arms, the students rose to their feet.
He stopped the cab a hundred feet away, went across a neighbor's lot, and got into the house by the back door, with the Yorkshire hidden under his coat. The doctor's buggy stood at the curbstone in front. The little girl was so weak that morning—what might not have happened? ”