SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT MY DOG. 231 



do not know all of their life; we can not enter the 

 source of their thoughts or impulses any more than 

 we can penetrate to the inner personality of a fellow- 

 man, and see with his eyes, and think with his mind. 

 I suppose that there will always be a certain sphere 

 of existence wherein every being lives absolutely alone, 

 unrevealed, save by outward tokens, in the citadel of 

 his own soul. This I believe to be true of dogs and 

 horses and the other animals. We know something 

 of them, but it is not a great deal, and perhaps they 

 know as much of us as we do of them. It was Dr. 

 McCosh, I believe, who, when asked whether a dog, 

 in baying at the moon, actually conceived of the moon 

 as a separate mass of matter in the skies, or merely 

 perceived its shining face coming up across the great 

 dome and barked at it in a sort of superstition, re- 

 plied, with his characteristic Scotch humor, "I do not 

 know; I have never been a dog." 



We can not, we do not, know all that passes in a 

 dog's mind, his memories, his thoughts, if he has any, 

 or whether he lives only in the present, after all. That 

 they have dreams, we know. I have seen my little dog 

 lying in deep, snoring sleep, when suddenly he would 

 begin wagging his tail up and down against the floor, 

 or would paw with his forefeet as if digging; and, 

 when awakened, he would look about him in a dazed 

 way in the most amazed fashion just like a human 

 being, with the memory of a dream. And I remember 

 once, out at a farm where the dog's chief master and 

 companion had been away for a time, when I by chance 

 put on his master's old canvas coat one morning, the 

 dog, when he first saw me, bounded toward me with a 



