WAYS OF NATURE 
may have with a dog, simply because he is a dog, 
and does not invade your own exclusive sphere! He 
is, in a way, like your youth come back to you, and 
taking form — all instinct and joy and adventure. 
You can ignore him, and he is not offended; you 
can reprove him, and he still loves you; you can hail 
him, and he bounds with joy; you can camp and 
tramp and ride with him, and his interest and curi- 
osity and adventurous spirit give to the days and the 
nights the true holiday atmosphere. With him you 
are alone and not alone; you have both compan- 
ionship and solitude. Who would have him more 
human or less canine? He divines your thought 
through his love, and feels your will in the glance of 
your eye. He is not a rational being, yet he is a very 
susceptible one, and touches us at so many points 
that we come to look upon him with a fraternal 
regard. 
I suppose we should not care much for natural 
history, as I have before said, or for the study of 
nature generally, if we did not in some way find 
ourselves there; that is, something that is akin to 
our own feelings, methods, and intelligence. We 
have traveled that road, we find tokens of ourselves 
on every hand; we are “stuccoed with quadrupeds 
and birds all over,” as Whitman says. The life- 
history of the humblest animal, if truly told, is 
profoundly interesting. If we could know all that 
befalls the slow moving turtle in the fields, or the 
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