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. To have been loved—that, all said and done, is the great thing, for it comprises all others. Another French One of Murphy’s last acts by his grandfather reflected his own character, no less than the affectionate relations existing between himself and Dan. It was the custom to give the dogs certain biscuits after dinner of which they were particularly fond, and they sat side by side to receive them. One evening, when the biscuit tin was taken out as usual, Dan was absent. He was old; probably asleep: better let Murphy have his, and have done with it. The young dog refused to have anything to say to such suggestions; and for the moment his attitude was put down to an access of shyness, for these particular biscuits were irresistible. Presently he began barking and running backwards and forwards to Dan’s last resting-place was, of course, in the dogs’ burial-ground in the family home. To lie there was the highest honour bestowable, and Dan had wholly earned it. Many generations of dogs lay in and around that corner, and the spot, if not consecrated, was at least regarded by most as very sacred. This was it. An angle of old, ruined brick wall, facing West—part of an ancient garden—beautiful in colour and It was not always so for dogs, here or We have come out of all that now, and rather plume ourselves upon the fact. We have altered our opinions respecting the proper place and surroundings of our dogs here; and many of us are not ashamed to confess that we hold opinions staunchly regarding their place and surroundings hereafter. We also have our Yet let us not forget the fact that others, in the past, have gone before us, and far ahead of us, on this same track, of which we often speak with so much unction. In ancient Egypt dogs had names, and these are found inscribed in many places. They were the favourites of the home, and constantly made much of. They wore collars, too, and often by no means cheap ones; and just as they were everywhere admitted to the house, so, all these ages ago, they were talked to, and also made to talk. Legends were woven about their doings and their ways. And if, in many cases, they were small and insignificant, with short legs like the That was sufficient, surely. Then, too, there was Anubis, who was given a dog’s head and a man’s body: he was worshipped as a deity and the genius of the Nile, who had ordered the rising of the great river at the proper season from the beginning of the world, and whose doings in this way were marked by the coming of the Dog-star, with seventy times more power than the sun—the An animal such as the dog, even if dumb, which in justice he could scarcely be thought, was thus judged entitled to a consideration never vouchsafed to others, and duly received it, therefore, at all times in this enlightened land. And not only in the fleeting years of his existence, but equally when he lay down under the common hand of death. The dog, in those forgotten days, received embalmment, just as his master and mistress, and was then carried with some solemnity to the burial-ground that was set apart for dogs in every town. And when the last good-bye had been said, the family to which he had belonged returned again to their house, and put on mourning for their friend and faithful guardian, shaving their heads, and abstaining for a time from food. So was it Murphy was not told many of these latter things, though obscurantism is always to be utterly condemned. It was thought better that he should not know them, or other darker facts to do with modern scientific times, lest by chance they give rise to strange and unorthodox reflections in a brain so active as his. When the day came for Dan’s best friend—she called him “Best of all”—to set out on a journey, to see the last of him, Murphy and his master, being left alone, turned naturally in their talk to the place where Dan was to be laid, as also to the doings of many other dogs who had lived and loved and had had the supreme happiness of hunting there throughout their lives. Some were good, and others, well—not so good. Others Each, of course, had his characteristics, and did his funny, or his wicked, things. In the face of a recent occurrence, it would have been a mistake to point a moral, or reference might have been made to Bruce, the deerhound, shot dead by accident when hunting sheep at night. That would do for another day, should circumstances arise to give the story point. There were plenty of other anecdotes besides that, and here are one or two that Murphy heard. Perhaps Fritz, the Spitz, did the most remarkable thing of all. His master One other action of his deserves to be recorded, for it affords an instance of how nearly dogs approach at times to human beings. No man is so wholly hardened as to care to die disliked, while Graf, another of the same breed, but belonging to a period twenty years later than Fritz, had also curious ways of his own. He could run down a rabbit in the open, and did it on many an occasion; but if this was remarkable—a rabbit being reckoned one of the quickest of all animals But he was otherwise a good dog, and so it was that he who read The Guardian
By way of parodying this, in the case of another dog, it was suggested by one who was flippant that his epitaph might run—“And may our lives have fewer faults than thine.” But while it is true that this one had run up quite a heavy bill in cats and committed many other enormities, the line De mortuis nil nisi bonum was kept in view, and, if nothing could be said, it was judged better to say nothing. Moreover, as Murphy duly remarked, while we talked over the wonderful doings of many and many a dog now lying in this sacred corner, “What could you possibly have expected in such a case, and from one of Us that you had wilfully named Scamp?” There was, of course, something in that, and many of Scamp’s acts deserved to be recorded, though this is no place for doing so. At one time he was in London. Residence there naturally put a To have done anything so clever as that might have been thought to have earned the right to headstone and epitaph in full. Yet his resting-place remains unmarked, and his name apparently dogged him to the end, and past it. “What was that about De mortuis?” came the question from Murphy. “Nil nisi bonum.” “That never should have been raised, in his case. What about De vivis?” There was indignation in the tone; perhaps justly. |