Gordon Stables

“ It was thought manly to domineer over helpless brutes, to pull horses on their haunches, to goad oxen along the road, though they were moving to death in the shambles, to stone or beat poor fallen sheep, to hunt cats with dogs, and to attend bull-baitings and dog and cock fights. And there are people even yet who talk of these days as the good old times when ‘a man was a man.’ But such people have only to visit some low-class haunt of ‘the fancy,’ when ‘business’ is being transacted, to learn how depraving are the effects of familiarity with scenes of cruelty towards the lower animals. ”

“ It is an expression we often make use of. Bonnie Berks—bonnie even in winter, when the fields are robed in starry snow; bonnie in spring-time, when the fields are rolling clouds of tenderest green, when the young wheat is peeping through the brown earth, when primroses cluster beneath the hedgerows, and everything is so gay and so happy and hopeful that one’s very soul soars heavenwards with the lark.
But Berks I thought never looked more bonnie than it did one lovely autumn morning, when Ida and I and the dogs walked up the hill towards our favourite seat in the old pine wood. ”

“ It is Miss Laura’s footstep on the stair. She is singing as sweetly as only Laura can. She approaches the door; her hand is on the latch. I can stand it no longer. With one bound, with one wild cry, I dash through a pane of glass, and drop almost senseless on to the lawn beneath the window.
It was sad enough to have to leave my dear mistress and my dear old home, which, despite all I had endured, I had learned to love, as only we poor pussies can love our homes. But my mind was made up. I had eaten Miss Laura’s pet canary, and I dare never, never look her in the face again. ”

“ He was a large and very strong dog, feathered like a Newfoundland, but with hair so soft and long and glossy, as to gain for him in his native village the epithet of “silken dog.” In colour he was black-and-tan, with snow-white gauntlets and shirt-front. His face was very remarkable, his eyes bright and tender, giving him, with his long, silky ears, almost the expression of a beautiful girl. Being good-mannered, kind, and always properly groomed, he was universally admired, and respected by high and low. ”

“ Do you know, then, Ida, that I am quite convinced that Providence gave mankind the dog to be a real companion to him, and I believe that this is the reason why a dog is so very, very faithful, so long-suffering under trial, so patient when in pain, and so altogether good and kind. When I look at poor old Nero, as he lies beside you there, half asleep, yet listening to every word we say, my thoughts revert to many a bygone scene in which he and I were the principal actors. ”

“ But one day this bird of freedom hopped away, fiddle-string and all, and a whole fortnight elapsed before I saw him again. I was just beginning to put faith in a belief common in India—namely, that a crow or any other bird, that has been for any time living with human beings, is put to instant death the moment he returns to the bosom of his family; when one day, while engaged breakfasting some forty crows, my club-footed pet reappeared, and actually picked the bit from my hand, and ever after, until I left, he came regularly thrice a day to be fed. ”

“ I am no longer a thief, for I do not need to steal. My mistress has a canary, but I would not touch it for worlds—indeed, I love to hear it sing, although its music is not half so sweet to me as that of the teakettle. Of an evening when the gas is lighted, and a bright fire burning in the grate, we all sing together—that is, the kettle, canary, and myself. They say I am very beautiful, and I believe they are right, for I have twice taken a prize at a cat show, and hope to win another. ”

“ And spring, summer, autumn, or winter they are ever pointing skywards. In the winter months they are leafless and bare, and there is a wild, weird look about them on a still night, when the moon and stars are shining, which it would be difficult to describe in words. But sometimes in winter, when the hoar-frost falls and silvers every twiglet and branch till they resemble nothing so much as the snowiest of coral, then, indeed, the beauty with which they are adorned, once seen must ever be remembered. ”

“ The head and shoulders are bent downward at almost a right angle, as if the creature had fallen on its head and broken its back; but, for all its beauty, the mosquito is a hypocritical little scoundrel, who comes singing around you, apparently so much at his ease, and looking so innocent and gentle, that one would imagine butter would hardly melt in his naughty little mouth. He alights upon your skin with such a light and fairy tread, inserts his tube, and sucks your blood so cleverly, that the mischief is done long before you are aware, and he is off again singing as merrily as ever. ”

“ We like solitude, and keep ourselves in the wild state to ourselves. Perhaps if we went in flocks, and had as much to say for ourselves as those noisy brutes of rooks, we would be more thought of. Even in the domestic state we like our liberty, and think it terribly cruel to be obliged to mope all day long in a wicker cage. It is crueller still to hang us in draughts, or in too strong a sun; while to keep our cage damp and dirty cramps our legs and gives us such twinges of rheumatism in our poor unused wings, that we often long to die and be at rest. ”

“ Against the kitchen end of the tunnel a cage for Mary was hung. This was to be her dining-room, her nest, and sleeping-berth. Now, for the sitting-room end of the tunnel, I had a painting made on a sheet of glass, over two feet long by eighteen inches high. The scene represented is from a sketch in North Greenland, which I myself had made, a scene in the frozen sea—the usual blue sky which you always find over the ice, an expanse of snow, a bear in the distance, and a ship frozen in and lying nearly on her beam ends. A dreary enough look-out, in all conscience, but true to nature. ”

“ A bigger house, though certainly not a mansion; but here are gardens and lawn and paddock, kennels for dogs, home for cats, and aviaries for birds, many a shady nook in which to hang a hammock in the summer months, and a garden wigwam, which makes a cool study even in hot weather, bedraped as it is in evergreens, and looks a cosy wee room in winter, when the fire is lighted and the curtains are drawn. ”

“ Indeed, the lawn is little more than a vast outdoor aviary—it is a bird-haunted lawn. There is a rough, shallow bath under a tree at the end of it, and here the blackbirds, thrushes, and starlings come to splash early in the morning, and stare up at my window as I dress, as coolly as if they had not been all up in the orchard trees breakfasting off the red-heart cherries. ”

“ Lazy watermen by the dozen loll about the pier-head with their arms, to say nothing of their hands, buried deeply in their breeches-pockets, while every male you meet is either soldier or sailor, dockyard’s man or solemn-looking policeman. Every shop that isn’t a beer-house, is either a general dealer’s, where you can purchase anything nautical, from a sail-needle to sea boots, or an eating house, in the windows of which are temptingly exposed joints of suspiciously red corned-beef, soapy-looking mutton and uninviting pork, and where you are invited to partake of tea and shrimps for ninepence. ”

“ It is, as far as beauty goes, one of the best cage-birds we have; a modest, wee, affectionate, unassuming pet, but deficient in song.
“Cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, cheet, chee-ee!” What sweet little voice is that repeating the same soft song over and over again, and dwelling on the last syllable with long-drawn cadence? The music—for music it is, although a song without variations—is coming from yonder bonnie bush of golden-blossomed broom, that grows in the angle between the two walls in a remote corner of the auld kirkyard. ”

“ Little birdies are so happy, and awake every morning as fresh and joyous as innocent children.
“Twitter, twitter, twitter, twee!” went the song for fully half an hour, till it was so light that even the lazy sparrows began to awake, and squabble, and scold, and fight; for you must know that sparrows hold about the same social rank in the feathered creation, that the dwellers around Billingsgate do among human beings.
Then there would be such a chorus of squabbling from the big trees, that poor robin had to give up singing in disgust, and come down to have his breakfast. ”

“ Mary knows her name, and never fails to come to call, and indeed she knows a very great deal that is said to her. Whenever she pops through her tunnel, the little door at the kitchen end closes behind her, and she is a prisoner in Greenland until I choose to send her off. If she is in her kitchen cage, and I wish her to come north, and disport herself to the amusement of myself or friends—one touch to the spring, one cabalistic word, and there comes the little performer, all alive and full of fun. ”

“ So we determined to make the best of matters and stay all night; the little place was as clean as clean could be, and the landlady, in mutch of spotless white, was delighted at the prospect of having us.
She heaped the wood on the hearth as the evening glome began to descend; the bright flames leapt up and cast great shadows on the wall behind us, and we all gathered round the fire, the all including Nero and Aileen; the circle would not have been complete without them. ”

“ When tired of romping and running, like two feline madcaps, Mirram would propose a song, and while the stars glittered overhead, or the moon shone brightly down on them, they would seat themselves lovingly side by side and engage in a duet. Now, however pleasant cats’ music heard at midnight may appear to the pussies themselves, it certainly is not conducive to the sleep of any nervous invalid who may happen to dwell in the neighbouring houses, or very soothing either. ”

“ Can’t you leave a poor fellow alone? What do ye come pottering around here at midnight for?”
Such is the hum-drum drowsiness of little Fernydale.
But bonny is our cottage in spring and summer, when the pink-eyed chestnuts are all ablaze at the foot of the lawn, when flowers bloom white on the scented rowans, when the yellow gorse on the knoll beyond glints through the green of the trees, when the merlin sings among the drooping limes, and the croodling pigeons make soft-eyed love on the eaves ”

“ She loves us all, and will let my sister, wife, or little niece do anything with her, but she is still most viciously savage to nearly all strangers. She is the best guard-dog that I ever possessed, and a terror to tramps. She is very wise too, this Dandie of mine, for when out walking with any one of my relations, she is as gentle as a lamb, and will let anybody fondle her. She may thus be taken along with us with impunity when making calls upon friends, but very few indeed of those friends dare go near her when in her own garden or kennel. ”

“ Dear me, how often I have wondered how other poor cats who have neither kind master nor mistress manage to live. But, the poor creatures, they are so ignorant—badly-bred, you know. Why, only the other day the young master brought home a poor little cat he had found starving in the street. Well, I never in all my life saw such an ill-mannered, rude little wretch, for no sooner had it got itself stuffed with the best fare in the house, than it made a deliberate attempt to steal the canary. ”

“ And oh! the sad irony of fate, for on the very morning of this deposed monarch’s execution, the sun was shining, the birds singing, the corn springing up and looking so green and bonny; and probably the last thing he heard in life was King John crowing, as he proudly perched himself on the edge of his water-tub throne. One could almost afford to drop a tear of pity for the dead King Cockeroo, were it possible to forget that, while in life and in power, he had been both a bully and a coward. ”

“ I was just wondering how I could get the bottle away without letting the governor see me, when some one else spotted that unhappy cockroach, and that was Carlo.
Now Carlo was a dog who acted on the spur of the moment, so as soon as he saw the beast in the bottle he flew straight at it. That spring would have taken him over a six-barred gate. And, woe is me for the result! Down rolled the table, crockery and all; down rolled the governor, with his bald pate and rotundity of body; down went the merry little thin man; over rolled the fellow with the nose like a kidney potato. ”