Beautiful Joe (25 page)

To return
to Dandy. I knew he was only waiting for the spring to leave us, and I was not
sorry. The first fine day he was off, and during the rest of the spring and
summer we occasionally met him running about the town with a set of fast dogs.
One day I stopped and asked him how he concealed himself in such a quiet place
as Fairport, and he said he was dying to get back to New York, and was hoping
that his master’s yacht would come and take him away.

Poor Dandy
never left Fairport. After all, he was not such a bad dog. There was nothing
really vicious about him, and I hate to speak of his end. His master’s yacht
did not come, and soon the summer was over, and the winter was coming, and no
one wanted Dandy, for he had such a bad name. He got hungry and cold, and one
day sprang upon a little girl, to take away a piece of bread and butter that
she was eating. He did not see the large house-dog on the door sill, and before
he could get away, the dog had seized him, and bitten and shaken him till he
was nearly dead. When the dog threw him aside, he crawled to the Morrises, and
Miss Laura bandaged his wounds, and made him a bed in the stable.

One Sunday
morning she washed and fed him very tenderly, for she knew he could not live
much longer. He was so weak that he could scarcely eat the food that she put in
his mouth, so she let him lick some milk from her finger. As she was going to
church, I could not go with her, but I ran down the lane and watched her out of
sight.

When I
came back, Dandy was gone. I looked till I found him. He had crawled into the
darkest corner of the stable to die, and though he was suffering very much, he never
uttered a sound. I sat by him and thought of his master in New York. If he had
brought Dandy up properly he might not now be here in his silent death agony. A
young pup should be trained just as a child is, and punished when he goes
wrong. Dandy began badly, and not being checked in his evil ways, had come so
this. Poor Dandy! Poor, handsome dog of a rich master! He opened his dull eyes,
gave me one last glance, then, with a convulsive shudder, his torn limbs were
still. He would never suffer any more.

When Miss
Laura came home, she cried bitterly to know that he was dead. The boys took him
away from her, and made him a grave in the corner of the garden.

I have
come now to the last chapter of my story. I thought when I began to write, that
I would put down the events of each year of my life, but I fear that would make
my story too long, and neither Miss Laura nor any boys and girls would care to
read it. So I will stop just here, though I would gladly go on, for I have
enjoyed so much talking over old times, that I am very sorry to leave off.

Every year
that I have been at the Morrises’, something pleasant has happened to me, but I
cannot put all these things down, nor can I tell how Miss Laura and the boys
grew and changed, year by year, till now they are quite grown up. I will just
bring my tale down to the present time, and then I will stop talking, and go
lie down in my basket, for I am an old dog now, and get tired very easily.

I was a
year old when I went to the Morrises, and I have been with them for twelve
years. I am not living in the same house with Mr. and Mrs. Morris now, but I am
with my dear Miss Laura, who is Miss Laura no longer, but Mrs. Gray. She
married Mr. Harry four years ago, and lives with him and Mr. and Mrs. Wood, on
Dingley Farm. Mr. and Mrs. Morris live in a cottage nearby. Mr. Morris is not
very strong, and can preach no longer. The boys are all scattered. Jack married
pretty Miss Bessie Drury, and lives on a large farm near here. Miss Bessie says
that she hates to be a farmer’s wife, but she always looks very happy and contented,
so I think that she must be mistaken. Carl is a merchant in New York, Ned is a
clerk in a bank, and Willie is studying at a place called Harvard. He says that
after he finishes his studies, he is going to live with his father and mother.

The
Morrises’ old friends often come to see them. Mrs. Drury comes every summer on
her way to Newport, and Mr. Montague and Charlie come every other summer.
Charlie always brings with him his old dog Brisk, who is getting feeble, like
myself. We lie on the veranda in the sunshine, and listen to the Morrises
talking about old days, and sometimes it makes us feel quite young again. In
addition to Brisk we have a Scotch collie. He is very handsome, and is a
constant attendant of Miss Laura’s. We are great friends, he and I, but he can
get about much better than I can. One day a friend of Miss Laura’s came with a
little boy and girl, and “Collie” sat between the two children, and their
father took their picture with a Kodak. I like him so much that I told him I
would get them to put his picture in my book.

When the
Morris boys are all here in the summer we have gay times. All through the
winter we look forward to their coming, for they make the old farmhouse so
lively. Mr. Maxwell never misses a summer in coming to Riverdale. He has such a
following of dumb animals now, that he says he can’t move them any farther away
from Boston than this, and he doesn’t know what he will do with them, unless he
sets up a menagerie. He asked Miss Laura the other day, if she thought that the
old Italian would take him into partnership. He did not know what had happened
to poor Bellini, so Miss Laura told him.

A few
years ago the Italian came to Riverdale, to exhibit his new stock of performing
animals. They were almost as good as the old ones, but he had not quite so many
as he had before. The Morrises and a great many of their friends went to his
performance, and Miss Laura said afterward, that when cunning little Billy came
on the stage, and made his bow, and went through his antics of jumping through
hoops, and catching balls, that she almost had hysterics. The Italian had made
a special pet of him for the Morrises’ sake, and treated him more like a human
being than a dog. Billy rather put on airs when he came up to the farm to see
us, but he was such a dear, little dog, in spite of being almost spoiled by his
master, that Jim and I could not get angry with him. In a few days they went
away, and we heard nothing but good news from them, till last winter. Then a
letter came to Miss Laura from a nurse in a New York hospital. She said that
the Italian was very near his end, and he wanted her to write to Mrs. Gray to
tell her that he had sold all his animals but the little dog that she had so
kindly given him. He was sending him back to her, and with his latest breath he
would pray for heaven’s blessing on the kind lady and her family that had
befriended him when he was in trouble.

The next
day Billy arrived, a thin, white scarecrow of a dog. He was sick and unhappy,
and would eat nothing, and started up at the slightest sound. He was listening
for the Italian’s footsteps, but he never came, and one day Mr. Harry looked up
from his newspaper and said, “Laura, Bellini is dead.” Miss Laura’s eyes filled
with tears, and Billy, who had jumped up when he heard his master’s name, fell
back again. He knew what they meant, and from that instant he ceased listening
for footsteps, and lay quite still till he died. Miss Laura had him put in a
little wooden box, and buried him in a corner of the garden, and when she is
working among her flowers, she often speaks regretfully of him, and of poor
Dandy, who lies in the garden at Fairport.

Bella, the
parrot, lives with Mrs. Morris, and is as smart as ever. I have heard that
parrots live to a very great age. Some of them even get to be a hundred years
old. If that is the case, Bella will outlive all of us. She notices that I am
getting blind and feeble, and when I go down to call on Mrs. Morris, she calls
out to me, “Keep a stiff upper lip, Beautiful Joe. Never say die, Beautiful
Joe. Keep the game a-going, Beautiful Joe.”

Mrs.
Morris says that she doesn’t know where Bella picks up her slang words. I think
it is Mr. Ned who teaches her, for when he comes home in the summer he often
says, with a sly twinkle in his eye, “Come out into the garden, Bella,” and he
lies in a hammock under the trees, and Bella perches on a branch near him, and
he talks to her by the hour. Anyway, it is in the autumn after he leaves
Riverdale that Bella always shocks Mrs. Morris with her slang talk.

I am glad
that I am to end my days in Riverdale. Fairport was a very nice place, but it
was not open and free like this farm. I take a walk every morning that the sun
shines. I go out among the horses and cows, and stop to watch the hens pecking
at their food. This is a happy place, and I hope my dear Miss Laura will live
to enjoy it many years after I am gone.

I have
very few worries. The pigs bother me a little in the spring, by rooting up the
bones that I bury in the fields in the fall, but that is a small matter, and I try
not to mind it. I get a great many bones here, and I should be glad if I had
some poor, city dogs to help me eat them. I don’t think bones are good for
pigs.

Then there
is Mr. Harry’s tame squirrel out in one of the barns that teases me
considerably. He knows that I can’t chase him, now that my legs are so stiff
with rheumatism, and he takes delight in showing me how spry he can be, darting
around me and whisking his tail almost in my face, and trying to get me to run
after him, so that he can laugh at me. I don’t think that he is a very
thoughtful squirrel, but I try not to notice him.

The sailor
boy who gave Bella to the Morrises has got to be a large, stout man, and is the
first mate of a vessel. He sometimes comes here, and when he does, he always brings
the Morrises presents of foreign fruits and curiosities of different kinds.

Malta, the
cat, is still living, and is with Mrs. Morris. Davy, the rat, is gone, so is
poor old Jim. He went away one day last summer, and no one ever knew what
became of him. The Morrises searched everywhere for him, and offered a large
reward to anyone who would find him but he never turned up again. I think that
he felt he was going to die, and went into some out-of-the-way place. He
remembered how badly Miss Laura felt when Dandy died, and he wanted to spare
her the greater sorrow of his death. He was always such a thoughtful dog, and
so anxious not to give trouble. I am more selfish. I could not go away from
Miss Laura even to die. When my last hour comes, I want to see her gentle face bending
over me, and then I shall not mind how much I suffer.

She is
just as tender-hearted as ever, but she tries not to feel too badly about the
sorrow and suffering in the world, because she says that would weaken her, and
she wants all her strength to try to put a stop to some of it. She does a great
deal of good in Riverdale, and I do not think that there is any one in all the
country around who is as much beloved as she is.

She has
never forgotten the resolve that she made some years ago, that she would do all
that she could to protect dumb creatures. Mr. Harry and Mr. Maxwell have helped
her nobly. Mr. Maxwell’s work is largely done in Boston, and Miss Laura and Mr.
Harry have to do the most of theirs by writing, for Riverdale has got to be a
model village in respect of the treatment of all kinds of animals. It is a
model village not only in that respect, but in others. It has seemed as if all
other improvements went hand in hand with the humane treatment of animals.

Thoughtfulness
toward lower creatures has made the people more and more thoughtful toward
themselves, and this little town is getting to have quite a name through the
State for its good schools, good society, and good business and religious
standing. Many people are moving into it, to educate their children. . The
Riverdale people are very particular about what sort of strangers come to live
among them.

A man, who
came here two years ago and opened a shop, was seen kicking a small kitten out
of his house. The next day a committee of Riverdale citizens waited on him, and
said they had had a great deal of trouble to root out cruelty from their
village, and they didn’t want anyone to come there and introduce it again, and
they thought he had better move on to some other place. The man was utterly
astonished, and said he’d never heard of such particular people. He had had no
thought of being cruel. He didn’t think that the kitten cared; but now when he
turned the thing over in his mind, he didn’t suppose cats liked being kicked
about any more than he would like it himself, and he would promise to be kind to
them in future. He said, too, that if they had no objection, he would just stay
on, for if the people there treated dumb animals with such consideration, they
would certainly treat human beings better, and he thought it would be a good
place to bring up his children in. Of course they let him stay, and he is now a
man who is celebrated for his kindness to every living thing; and he never
refuses to help Miss Laura when she goes to him for money to carry out any of
her humane schemes.

There is
one most important saying of Miss Laura’s that comes out of her years of
service for dumb animals that I must put in before I close and it is this. She
says that cruel and vicious owners of animals should be punished, but to merely
thoughtless people, don’t say “Don’t” so much. Don’t go to them and say, “Don’t
overfeed your animals, and don’t starve them and don’t overwork them, and don’t
beat them,” and so on through the long list of hardships that can be put upon
suffering animals, but say simply to them, “Be kind. Make a study of your
animals’ wants, and see that they are satisfied. No one can tell you how to
treat your animal as well as you should know yourself, for you are with it all
the time, and know its disposition, and just how much work it can stand, and how
much rest and food it needs, and just how it is different from every other
animal. If it is sick or unhappy, you are the one to take care of it; for
nearly every animal loves its own master better than a stranger, and will get
well quicker under his care.”

Miss Laura
says that if men and women are kind in every respect to their dumb servants,
they will be astonished to find how much happiness they will bring into their lives,
and how faithful and grateful their dumb animals will be to them.

Now, I
must really close my story. Good-bye to the boys and girls who may read it; and
if it is not wrong for a dog to say it, I should like to add, “God bless you
all.” If in my feeble way I have been able to impress you with the fact that
dogs and many other animals love their masters and mistresses, and live only to
please them, my little story will not be written in vain. My last words are, “Boys
and girls, be kind to dumb animals, not only because you will lose nothing by
it, but because you ought to; for they were placed on the earth by the same
Kind Hand that made all living creatures.”