Phil Robinson

“ Indeed, it might be well if some one would compile a counterblast of remarkable instances of the intelligence and docility of man, the human Trustys and good Dog Trays that abound in the world; the men who have been known to lose their friends in the streets and to find them again; who have been carried to immense distances by wrong trains, and turned up at home after all; who recognize acquaintances with every demonstration of delight after a long separation ”

“ They will creep, so the natives say, into houses, and lick the babies from the sleeping mothers’ arms. The soft warm touch of the wild beast’s tongue melts the guardian fingers open. One by one they loosen their hold, and, as the wrists sink apart, the baby slides gradually out of the protecting arms against the soft coat of the wolf. It does not wake, and then the brute bends down its head to find the child’s throat. ”

“ We do not as a rule expect facts to surprise us; so when they do, they startle us much more than any narrative ever created by novelist or poet. In that case they are more like fiction than fiction itself, and are therefore all the more charming. Thus, “The Bear in the Pig-sty” story may be considered admirable, while a pleasure is superadded by the reflection that the faith of childhood, which is at once the most solemn and the most fascinating attribute of that reverend and delightful age, has not been trifled with and betrayed. ”

“ Nor in all the records of human violence is there to be found anything more tremendous than the deadly patience with which the trooped wolves pursue their victims, or the fierce élan with which they launch themselves from the forest depths upon the passing prey. A party of eighty Russian soldiers, fully armed, were moving in mid-winter from one post to another, when, just as the shades of evening were closing round them, an immense pack of wolves — scouring the black countryside for food — came suddenly across their line of march. ”

“ The pain of even such an attack as that, however, could hardly increase for the unfortunate men the terrors of their position, when there rose up out of the pig’s straw the giant apparition of a growling beast, a great black monster all hair and fury, that was upon them in an instant, roaring like an earthquake, and striking with the arms of a giant. ”

“ For myself, I think no worse of the bear than Toussenel does, — indeed, hardly so badly; for I hesitate to agree with him that it symbolizes only the spirit of persistent savagery, the incorrigible protest of Routine against Reform; that it is the feral incarnation of hostility to progress, and the champion-in-arms of the pretended rights of the Beast against the authority of Man. Men of science assure us that it is one of the senior quadrupeds of the earth ”

“ We in the West have flung our prejudices at even inoffensive creatures. Thus, the cormorant is abused by every poet who has mentioned the bird. The owl has no more friends than the toad; and the buzzard and the raven are as unpopular, and as heartily maligned by our imaginative writers, and in our proverbs and ballads, as the badger and the newt. Many others meet only with acidulated compliments, and some — like the glutton among beasts, the crow among birds — are ungenerously denied the possession of the most ordinary beast and fowl virtues. ”

“ From first to last the story has always been completely credible, for given a widow with a pig, a man with a bear, and robbers with a sack, the incident is one that might happen at any time.
Such being the story, so consistent in its circumstances and so complete in its action, it is very pleasing to find that the implicit faith of children in it has, after all, been rewarded by its actual occurrence. Everything is true that really happens, and it does not matter whether the story or the event comes first. ”

“ Pride affects the dog mind, for who has not heard of Dawson’s dog that was too proud to take the wall of a dung-cart, and so got flattened under the wheels? Vanity was admirably displayed by an old setter, who often caused us great inconvenience by insisting on following members of the family whenever they went out, usually most inopportunely. But one day the children, playing with it, tied a bow of ribbon on to the tip of its tail, and on everybody laughing at the dog’s appearance, the animal retired under the sofa and sulked for an hour. ”

“ For myself, I think the dignified position which the dog fills in human society can be far more worthily treated, than by anecdotes of his various virtues and vices, for after all he is one of man’s chiefest triumphs, and one of his noblest servants. “In the beginning Allah created Man, and seeing what a helpless creature he was He gave him the Dog. And He charged the Dog that he should be the eyes and the ears, the understanding and the legs of the Man.” ”

“ But, after all, no pleading can avail the wolf, for the whole history of man — black or white, brown, red or yellow — convicts these animals of persistent and ineradicable wickedness — rising, often, it is true, to a considerable dignity in the proportions and manner of their crime, but as a rule taking rank only as misdemeanants of the lowest type.
Children looking at wolves always greet them as how-wows., and in their pretty sympathy offer the wild hunter of the forest morsels of bun. Such cates, however, are not to the wolf’s taste; he would far rather have the children themselves. ”

“ Pretenders should be poor if they wish to be unmolested. Yet the bear obstinately maintains the unequal struggle, appealing to its semi-erect posture, its hand-like paws, its almost-absent tail, and its innocent tastes, for the clemency and consideration of man. It would, too, recall the facts of history, and remind us how, in the olden days of Roman beast-fights, the bear was hissed from the arena because it refused to fight with the Christians and other captives provided for it ”

“ But rats have a large history of their own, outside rat-pits. In Egypt and Chaldsea they were the symbol of utter destruction, while in India they are to-day the emblem of prosperous wisdom. The Romans took augury from rats, — happy indeed the man who saw a white one; and Apollo, the most artistic of the Greek divinities, did not scorn the title of the rat-killer. In this very England of ours, the hardy Norseman rats bore their share in the Conquest nobly, and on the continent they have ruined a city and a river. Rats, they say, have scuttled ships, and it is certain they once ate up a bishop. ”

“ Again, if it discovers you sitting below it on the same hillside as itself, it rolls itself up, and comes trundling down the slope upon top of you like an ill-tempered portmanteau; or if it is down below you, and becomes provoked, it comes scrambling up the hill with a speed that in a creature of such a shape is described, by those who have been charged, as quite incredible. ”

“ The writer, Toussenel, then goes on to show how the dog was fitted for his important duties by being inspired with an overwhelming sense of the privileges of friendship and loyal devotion, and a corresponding disregard of the time-wasting joys of family and fireside pleasures, thinking, no doubt, with Bacon, that those without families — the discipline of humanity — make always the best public servants. “He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.” ”

“ The rats in the Deccan in the same way enjoyed the full benefit of this delightful catholicity of benevolence, not from any virtues inherent in that forward rodent, or any tradition of good done to man in a former state, but simply from the Hindoo’s tolerance of small life, and the contemporary growth of superstition.
The famines that laid waste some of the fairest provinces of India had stolen from every hearth one or more of the family circle, and the peasant mind, loyal to its teachings, refused to believe that the loved ones had been lost forever. ”

“ Only very young children, however, mistake the wolf for a dog, for there is that in its ugly eyes, set so close together and so sinister in their expression, that tells the elder ones that the creature before them is no dog, or, at any rate, not an honest specimen. Besides, nursery stories, fairy tales, and fables have taught them long ago the likeness of the wolf and its character, and the first look at the sharp snout set in gray fur reminds them of that face that little Red Riding Hood found looking out at her, one fine May morning, from under her dear old grandmother's nightcap. ”

“ Up and down the world at different times there have been many plagues — plagues of locusts and cockchafers, of mice and caterpillars, plagues that have ravaged the vineyards and the corn-fields, the pine-forests and the orchards, plagues that have afflicted the farmer and the merchant, the prince and the peasant, the tradesman and the manufacturer, plagues of beasts and birds and insects. Armies have actually marched against little things with wings, and senates have gravely sat in council over creeping creatures. ”

“ A man-eating tiger establishes his shambles near a village, but the villagers, knowing him to be an old and esteemed acquaintance, lately deceased, steal away from their hamlet and deprecate any violent dislodgment of the human soul from its present tiger body. Monkeys rob the shops in the bazaar, but who could think of reprisals against such holy thieves? Snakes take human life, but pay none in penalty. ”

“ Locusts are the avowed enemies of mankind, and their destruction has always been cheerfully assented to as a pleasing act of justice. No one when the vastatrix was at work among the vines held back the arm of retributive chemistry, nor when the cynips was vandalizing among our turnips was a kindly word spoken for the tiny foe. In India, however, every thing, whether with fur or feathers, whether winged or wingless, finds a friend. ”

“ I can appreciate the solemnity of the wolfs murders, supreme tragedies as they often are — or the splendor of its ravages when, Attila-like, it descends upon the fat plains to scourge the lowland folk — or the nobility of its recklessness as, from age to age, it challenges man to the unequal conflict — or the heroism which sends it out alone into the haunts of men to carry away a child, so that its own whelps may not starve. ”

“ Now, for myself, I do not grudge the same admiration to the wolf when it acts as bravely as those old heroes of the Sagas, especially since the Norsemen themselves, to express the intensity of their valor and the surpassing ferocity of their attack, had to go to the wolf for a simile. ”

“ At any rate I am prepared to produce from amongst my acquaintances as many sensible men as sensible dogs, and if necessary a large number of human beings who if taken by accident or design out of the road will set themselves right again, who if separated for years from friends will readily recognize them and welcome them, who on meeting those who have done them previous injuries will show at once by their demeanor that they remember the old grudge, who will detect false notes in a player’s performance, catch thieves, carry baskets to the butchers, defend their masters, and never worry sheep. ”

“ Tales of horror crowd into their memory as they look at the unkempt and restless -creatures, condemned to-day to civilization and monotony, but once, perhaps, actors themselves in the very scenes that make the narratives of wolf adventure so appalling. ”

“ There is a second moral also, and that is that children are wiser than grown-up people, inasmuch as they believe that there is nothing so wonderful but it may really come to pass, and that everything which will happen has already happened before. Children never give over expecting and hoping, and this is why they alone are never disappointed, and why they deserve so thoroughly to enjoy the triumph of their convictions.
The wolf is a creature of very bad character, and deserves most of it. ”

“ Now where does the intelligence come in, in this anecdote?
In a similar way stories are told in illustration of other feelings and passions, but most of them, so it seems to me, cut both ways. There are, indeed, many human feelings which the dog evinces in a marked way, and often upon very little provocation. The dog, for instance, expresses anger precisely as we do, and, in accordance with the human precept, “When the boy hits you, kick the post,” will bite his friend to show his displeasure at a stranger. ”

“ Truth, it is said, is stranger than fiction; and so it is in a certain sense, because it is in the nature of fiction to be strange; but truth is a prosaic, every-day sort of thing, and when it is romantic it strikes the mind as being peculiarly wonderful. ”

“ Few creatures have attained to such universal abuse as the rat, and few, perhaps, have deserved so much. It is true that its sagacity is prodigious, and every one knows that in the East it symbolizes Ganesha, the god of wisdom ”

“ It appears that, when a gang have come upon a larger plunder than they can carry away from the premises inside them, one of the number lies down on his back while the others load him up with the booty; that he balances the pile with four legs, and, to make matters extra safe, folds his tail over the goods and holds the tip in his mouth, and that his pals then drag him off along the ground by the ears and fur! ”

“ They are the type of the successful invader, sagacious in forecast, fierce in attack, and tenacious in possession. Wherever their colonies are planted, they take deep root at once and for ever, and the aborigines must either be absorbed into the conquering element, or disappear before it. Their motto is “Rats or nothing.” Rat society, though thus maintaining with persistent ferocity the ground it has gained, and gradually extending its area, will be found, in its latest developments, to be everywhere representative of the most degraded classes of humanity. ”