WAYS OF NATURE 
the action is not the kind that involves reason; it 
only implies sense perception, and the instinct of 
self-preservation. Stickeen does as his master bids 
him, and he is human only in the human emotions 
of fear, despair, joy, that he shows. 
In Mr. Egerton Young’s book, called “My Dogs 
of the Northland,” I find much that is interesting 
and several vivid dog portraits, but Mr. Young hu- 
manizes his dogs to a greater extent than does either 
Muir or Maeterlinck. For instance, he makes his 
dog Jack take special delight in teasing the Indian 
servant girl by walking or lying upon her kitchen 
floor when she had just cleaned it, all in revenge 
for the slights the girl had put upon him; and he 
gives several instances of the conduct of the dog 
which he thus interprets. Now one can believe 
almost anything of dogs in the way of wit about 
their food, their safety, and the like, but one can- 
not make them so entirely human as deliberately to 
plan and execute the kind of revenge here imputed 
to Jack. No animal could appreciate a woman’s 
pride in a clean kitchen floor, or see any relation 
between the tracks which he makes upon the floor 
and her state of feeling toward himself. Mr. 
Young’s facts are doubtless all right; it is his in- 
terpretation of them that is wrong. 
It is perfectly legitimate for the animal story 
writer to put himself inside the animal he wishes 
to portray, and tell how life and the world look from 
194 
