Spare Hours. Brown John

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СКАЧАТЬ was with us when we were condoling with her, and we saw that she looked very wistfully at Duchie. I wrote on the slate, “Would you like her?” and she through her tears said, “You know that would never do.” But it did do. We left Duchie that very night, and though she paid us frequent visits, she was Cousin Susan’s for life. I fear indulgence dulled her moral sense. She was an immense happiness to her mistress, whose silent and lonely days she made glad with her oddity and mirth. And yet the small creature, old, toothless, and blind, domineered over her gentle friend – threatening her sometimes if she presumed to remove the small Fury from the inside of her own bed, into which it pleased her to creep. Indeed, I believe it is too true, though it was inferred only, that her mistress and friend spent a great part of a winter night in trying to coax her dear little ruffian out of the centre of the bed. One day the cook asked what she would have for dinner: “I would like a mutton chop, but then, you know, Duchie likes minced veal better!” The faithful and happy little creature died at a great age, of natural decay.

      But time would fail me, and I fear patience would fail you, my reader, were I to tell you of Crab, of John Pym, of Puck, and of the rest. Crab, the Mugger’s dog, grave, with deep-set, melancholy eyes, as of a nobleman (say the Master of Ravenswood) in disguise, large visaged, shaggy, indomitable, come of the pure Piper Allan’s breed. This Piper Allan, you must know, lived some two hundred years ago in Cocquet Water, piping like Homer, from place to place, and famous not less for his dog than for his music, his news and his songs. The Earl of Northumberland, of his day, offered the piper a small farm for his dog, but after deliberating for a day Allan said, “Na, na, ma Lord, keep yir ferum; what wud a piper do wi’ a ferum?” From this dog descended Davidson of Hyndlee’s breed, the original Dandie-Dinmont, and Crab could count his kin up to him. He had a great look of the Right Honorable Edward Ellice, and had much of his energy and wecht; had there been a dog House of Commons, Crab would have spoken as seldom, and been as great a power in the house, as the formidable and faithful time-out-of-mind member for Coventry.

      John Pym was a smaller dog than Crab, of more fashionable blood, being a son of Mr. Somner’s famous Shem, whose father and brother are said to have been found dead in a drain into which the hounds had run a fox. It had three entrances: the father was put in at one hole, the son at another, and speedily the fox bolted out at the third, but no appearance of the little terriers, and on digging, they were found dead, locked in each other’s jaws; they had met, and it being dark, and there being no time for explanations, they had throttled each other. John was made of the same sort of stuff, and was as combative and victorious as his great namesake, and not unlike him in some of his not so creditable qualities. He must, I think, have been related to a certain dog to whom “life was full o’ sairiousness,” but in John’s case the same cause produced an opposite effect. John was gay and light-hearted, even when there was not “enuff of fechtin,” which, however, seldom happened, there being a market every week in Melrose, and John appearing most punctually at the cross to challenge all comers, and being short legged, he inveigled every dog into an engagement by first attacking him, and then falling down on his back, in which posture he latterly fought and won all his battles.

      What can I say of Puck6 – the thoroughbred – the simple-hearted – the purloiner of eggs warm from the hen – the flutterer of all manner of Volscians – the bandy-legged, dear, old, dilapidated buffer? I got him from my brother, and only parted with him because William’s stock was gone. He had to the end of life a simplicity which was quite touching. One summer day – a dog-day – when all dogs found straying were hauled away to the police-office, and killed off in twenties with strychnine, I met Puck trotting along Princes Street with a policeman, a rope round his neck, he looking up in the fatal, official, but kindly countenance in the most artless and cheerful manner, wagging his tail and trotting along. In ten minutes he would have been in the next world; for I am one of those who believe dogs have a next world, and why not? Puck ended his days as the best dog in Roxburghshire. Placide quiescas!

DICK

      Still lives, and long may he live! As he was never born, possibly he may never die; be it so, he will miss us when we are gone. I could say much of him, but agree with the lively and admirable Dr. Jortin, when, in his dedication of his Remarks on Ecclesiastical History to the then (1752) Archbishop of Canterbury, he excuses himself for not following the modern custom of praising his Patron, by reminding his Grace “that it was a custom amongst the ancients, not to sacrifice to heroes till after sunset.” I defer my sacrifice till Dick’s sun is set.

      I think every family should have a dog; it is like having a perpetual baby; it is the plaything and crony of the whole house. It keeps them all young. All unite upon Dick. And then he tells no tales, betrays no secrets, never sulks, asks no troublesome questions, never gets into debt, never coming down late for breakfast, or coming in through his Chubb too early to bed – is always ready for a bit of fun, lies in wait for it, and you may, if choleric, to your relief, kick him instead of some one else, who would not take it so meekly, and, moreover, would certainly not, as he does, ask your pardon for being kicked.

      Never put a collar on your dog – it only gets him stolen; give him only one meal a day, and let that, as Dame Dorothy, Sir Thomas Browne’s wife, would say, be “rayther under.” Wash him once a week, and always wash the soap out; and let him be carefully combed and brushed twice a week.

      By the bye, I was wrong in saying that it was Burns who said Man is the God of the Dog – he got it from Bacon’s Essay on Atheism.

      QUEEN MARY’S CHILD-GARDEN

      QUEEN MARY’S CHILD-GARDEN

      If any one wants a pleasure that is sure to please, one over which he needn’t growl the sardonic beatitude of the great Dean, let him, when the Mercury is at “Fair,” take the nine A.M. train to the North and a return-ticket for Callander, and when he arrives at Stirling, let him ask the most obliging and knowing of station-masters to telegraph to “the Dreadnought” for a carriage to be in waiting. When passing Dunblane Cathedral, let him resolve to write to the Scotsman, advising the removal of a couple of shabby trees which obstruct the view of that beautiful triple end window which Mr. Ruskin and everybody else admires, and by the time he has written this letter in his mind, and turned the sentences to it, he will find himself at Callander and the carriage all ready. Giving the order for the Port of Monteith, he will rattle through this hard-featured, and to our eye comfortless village, lying ugly amid so much grandeur and beauty, and let him stop on the crown of the bridge, and fill his eyes with the perfection of the view up the Pass of Leny – the Teith lying diffuse and asleep, as if its heart were in the Highlands and it were loath to go, the noble Ben Ledi imaged in its broad stream. Then let him make his way across a bit of pleasant moorland – flushed with maidenhair and white with cotton grass, and fragrant with the Orchis conopsia, well deserving its epithet odoratissima.

      He will see from the turn of the hill-side the Blair of Drummond waving with corn and shadowed with rich woods, where eighty years ago there was a black peat-moss; and far off, on the horizon, Damyat and the Touch Fells; and at his side the little loch of Ruskie, in which he may see five Highland cattle, three tawny brown and two brindled, standing in the still water – themselves as still, all except their switching tails and winking ears – the perfect images of quiet enjoyment. By this time he will have come in sight of the Lake of Monteith, set in its woods, with its magical shadows and soft gleams. There is a loveliness, a gentleness and peace about it more like “lone St. Mary’s Lake,” or Derwent Water, than of any of its sister lochs. It is lovely rather than beautiful, and is a sort of gentle prelude, in the minor key, to the coming glories and intenser charms of Loch Ard and the true Highlands beyond.

      You are now at the Port, and have passed the secluded and cheerful manse, and the parish kirk with its graves, close to the lake, and the proud aisle of the Grahams of Gartmore washed by its waves. Across the road is the modest little inn, a Fisher’s Tryst. On the unruffled water lie several islets, plump with rich foliage, brooding СКАЧАТЬ