230 , DOGS AND DOG LOVERS 



( 



" We was getting up our Children in the Wood 

 one morning, when there comes into our Ring by 

 the stage door a dog. He had travelled a long 

 way, he was in very bad condition, he was lame, 

 and pretty well blind. He went round to our 

 children, one after another, as if he was a-seeking 

 for a child he knowd ; and then he come to me, and 

 throwed himself up behind, and stood on his two 

 forelegs, weak as he was, and then wagged his tail 

 and died." 



I might doubtless give other instances of well- 

 known men who were lovers of dogs,^ but I shall 

 refrain from further quotation. The instincts of 

 man are being purged of the brutaUty by which 

 they are too often characterised, and what are 

 clumsily called dumb animals have benefited side 

 by side with human beings. It is not yet true that 

 even a merciful man is merciful to his beast, but in 

 England, at any rate, it is recognised that actual 

 cruelty to animals is wrong, but even this is not 

 always the case among other nations. My father 

 used to tell us how, when hjs horse was exhausted, 

 he lagged behind his S. American companion who 

 shouted, "Spur him! Don Carlos, spur him! he 

 is my horse," and simply could not understand 

 my father's motive. But I am glad to remember 

 that even among rough people, in uncivihsed ages, a 

 sense of humanity to animals was not unknown. 

 Busbecquius^ records that in Constantinople an 

 angry crowd assembled before a shop in which 



• See for instance the Lije and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol i, 

 p. 113. 



» C. T. Forster's Life and Letters of Ogier de Busbecq, 1881. 



