38 Chapters on Animals. 



mentioned a dog that he knew quite well which lost its 

 master three years ago from small-pox, and ever since 

 then, in all weathers, has paid a daily visit to the ceme- 

 tery, where it mourns upon his grave. The widow goes 

 to the grave on Sundays after mass, the dog knows this, 

 waits for her at the church-door, and accompanies her. 



Lyda has one quality which would make her invaluable 

 to an artist. Every painter who has attempted to draw 

 dogs knows how provokingly restless they always are, 

 and how impossible it is to study them as we do the human 

 model. But Lyda poses as perfectly as any human model 

 at the Royal Academy. I made a drawing of her the 

 morning after the performance and was delighted. Liter- 

 ally not a hair stirred during the wJiole time. She had the 

 stillness of a stuffed animal in a museum, with that perfec- 

 tion of living form which no taxidermist was ever yet able 

 to imitate or preserve. A dog so perfectly trained as Lyda 

 would be a priceless treasure for an animal-painter. 

 Blanche poses fairly well, but she is not to be compared 

 with Lyda. I wish I could give some notion of Lyda's 

 eyes ; they have the strangest half-human expression, as if 

 there were half a soul behind them. Her master says that 

 she looks at him with an intensity that is quite painful 

 when she is trying with all her might to understand what 

 he wishes her to learn. I declare that this creature's looks 

 are enough to frighten you if you dwell upon them, it 

 seems as if some unhappy child-soul had been imprisoned 

 in that canine shape. Are these poor dogs happy in their 

 strange, unnatural life 1 They are tenderly cared for, and 

 their master says that whoever beats a dog gives evidence 

 of his own personal stupidity, for a dog always tries his best 

 to understand, and you can make things clearest to him by 

 gentle teaching if you know how to teach at all. 



