HARDJVICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



169 



BRUCE! 



By J. E. TAYLOR. 



: And hopes that in yon equal sky, 

 His faithful dog shall bear him company." 



;E have been friends 

 and companions 

 for nearly seven 

 years. We so 

 thoroughly under- 

 stood each other 

 that we rarely 

 quarrelled — for 

 quarrels are al- 

 ways the result 

 of misunderstand- 

 ing. I am not 

 quite a believer in 

 the Indian doc- 

 trine of metem- 

 psychosis, but 

 there is something 

 in it. ' ' All crea- 

 tures meet in 

 man," said good 

 George Herbert. 

 You find one man " foxy " in cunning, another 

 " weasely " in suspicion, a third " hoggish " in feeding 

 or "fishy" in drinking (or both). The best thing 

 you can say of a man is that he is as "faithful as a 

 dog." So, you see, the dog bears the palm from the 

 man ! 



My dog had nothing human about him, and was 

 therefore an ideal dog. He was as well known about 

 the town as myself. Even the butcher-boys seldom 

 teased him. You would hear the lads calling, "Bruce, 

 Bruce," to him in any part of Ipswich, whenever we 

 wandered in search of quaint undescribed archseo- 

 logical " bits." The little dogs often followed him, 

 and sometimes barked at him, but Bruce took no 

 more notice of them than he did of the musical chimes 

 of St. Matthew's Church. He was a Prince among 

 dogs. He never stooped to anything mean, or low, 

 or cowardly. He was unpunctual sometimes in his 

 returns from calling on his friends ; but nobody would 

 No. 284.— August iSSS. 



have known it if his own conscience had not forced 

 him to assume that depressed appearance we call 

 "hang-dog." Nor did he come up to Professor 

 Huxley's definition of a dog as an " arrant cad-" — 

 one which only barked at people who were ragged, 

 and reserved his attentions for the well-clad. Bruce 

 did prefer well-dressed and good-mannered people — 

 who does not ? That was all. As he used to lie 

 outside my garden-gate, with his fore-feet stretched 

 out, and his magnificent, black, square head between 

 his paws, there was not a working man going or 

 returning from dinner who did not stop to pat him, 

 and say, " Bruce, good Bruce !" And Bruce responded 

 by a gentle switch of his great feathery tail, which 

 sent the flies spinning. The babies tottered up to 

 him, and pulled his long silken ears, and gave him 

 biscuits. Even the cats passed him by without 

 setting up their backs, for they had found out that 

 Bruce was harmless. 



Bruce was my literary friend. He has lain hours, 

 days, months at my feet whilst I have been writing. 

 He has listened, with one twitching ear, whilst I 

 have read aloud to myself some sentence I had 

 written which I thought unusually good — and after- 

 wards dropped it, wondering what it was all about, 

 and what good in the world it was to a dog ! How 

 well he knew me ! I had my moments of depression, 

 of anxiety, of low-spiritedness — frequently brought on 

 from assiduous over-work and over-worry. Bruce 

 knew ! Often has he silently thrust his great, cold, 

 black nose into my hand at such times. I knew 

 what he meant — "Cheer up, master; 'Heart 

 beneath and God o'erhead ' ! " 



Bruce came to me in disgrace. He was a fine 

 black, smooth-haired, retriever, and his crime was 

 that he would not retrieve. Perhaps he was like 

 myself — he didn't care to have anything to do with 

 that form of pleasure which is connected with suffering 

 and death. I fancy some keeper must have peppered 

 him in disgust at his unexpected and non-sportive 



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