Beautiful Joe (24 page)

About a
week after Billy left us, the Morris family, much to its surprise, became the
owner of a new dog.

He walked
into the house one cold, wintry afternoon and lay calmly down by the fire. He
was a brindled bull terrier, and he had on a silver-plated collar with “Dandy”
engraved on it. He lay all the evening by the fire, and when any of the family
spoke to him, he wagged his tail, and looked pleased. I growled a little at him
at first, but he never cared a bit, and just dozed off to sleep, so I soon
stopped.

He was
such a well-bred dog, that the Morrises were afraid that someone had lost him.
They made some inquiries the next day, and found that he belonged to a New York
gentleman who had come to Fairport in the summer in a yacht. This dog did not
like the yacht. He came ashore in a boat whenever he got a chance, and if he
could not come in a boat, he would swim. He was a tramp, his master said, and
he wouldn’t stay long in any place. The Morrises were so amused with his
impudence, that they did not send him away, but said every day, “Surely he will
be gone tomorrow.”

However,
Mr. Dandy had gotten into comfortable quarters, and he had no intention of
changing them, for a while at least. Then he was very handsome, and had such a
pleasant way with him, that the family could not help liking him. I never cared
for him. He fawned on the Morrises, and pretended he loved them, and afterward
turned around and laughed and sneered at them in a way that made me very angry.
I used to lecture him sometimes, and growl about him to Jim, but Jim always
said, “Let him alone. You can’t do him any good. He was born bad. His mother
wasn’t good. He tells me that she had a bad name among all the dogs in her neighborhood.
She was a thief and a runaway.” Though he provoked me so often, yet I could not
help laughing at some of his stories, they were so funny.

We were
lying out in the sun, on the platform at the back of the house, one day, and he
had been more than usually provoking, so I got up to leave him. He put himself
in my way, however, and said, coaxingly, “Don’t be cross, old fellow. I’ll tell
you some stories to amuse you, old boy. What shall they be about?”

“I think
the story of your life would be about as interesting as anything you could make
up,” I said, dryly.

“All
right, fact or fiction, whichever you like. Here’s a fact, plain and
unvarnished. Born and bred in New York. Swell stable. Swell coachman. Swell
master. Jewelled fingers of ladies poking at me, first thing I remember. First
painful experience—being sent to the vet, to have ears cut.”

“What’s a
vet?” I said.

“A
veterinary—animal doctor. Vet didn’t cut ears enough. Master sent me back. Cut
ears again. Summer time, and flies bad. Ears got sore and festered, flies very
attentive. Coachman set little boy to brush flies off, but he’d run out in yard
and leave me. Flies awful. Thought they’d eat me up, or else I’d shake out
brains trying to get rid of them. Mother should have stayed home and licked my
ears, but was cruising about neighborhood. Finally coachman put me in dark
place; powdered ears, and they got well.”

“Why didn’t
they cut your tail, too?” I said, looking at his long, slim tail, which was
like a sewer rat’s.

“’Twasn’t
the fashion, Mr. Wayback; a bull terrier’s ears are clipped to keep them from
getting torn while fighting.”

“You’re
not a fighting dog,” I said.

“Not I.
Too much trouble. I believe in taking things easy.”

“I should
think you did,” I said, scornfully. “You never put yourself out for any one, I
notice; but, speaking of cropping ears, what do you think of it?”

“Well,” he
said, with a sly glance at my head, “it isn’t a pleasant operation; but one
might well be out of the world as out of the fashion. I don’t care, now my ears
are done.”

“But,” I
said, “think of the poor dogs that will come after you.”

“What
difference does that make to me?” he said. “I’ll be dead and out of the way.
Men can cut off their ears, and tails, and legs, too, if they want to.”

“Dandy,” I
said, angrily, “you’re the most selfish dog that I ever saw.”

“Don’t
excite yourself,” he said, coolly. “Let me get on with my story. When I was a
few months old, I began to find the stable yard narrow and wondered what there
was outside of it. I discovered a hole in the garden wall, and used to sneak
out nights. Oh, what fun it was. I got to know a lot of street dogs, and we had
gay times, barking under people’s windows and making them mad, and getting into
back yards and chasing cats. We used to kill a cat nearly every night.
Policeman would chase us, and we would run and run till the water just ran off
our tongues, and we hadn’t a bit of breath left. Then I’d go home and sleep all
day, and go out again the next night. When I was about a year old, I began to
stay out days as well as nights. They couldn’t keep me home. Then I ran away
for three months. I got with an old lady on Fifth Avenue, who was very fond of
dogs. She had four white poodles, and her servants used to wash them, and tie
up their hair with blue ribbons, and she used to take them for drives in her
phaeton in the park, and they wore gold and silver collars. The biggest poodle
wore a ruby in his collar worth five hundred dollars. I went driving, too, and
sometimes we met my master. He often smiled, and shook his head at me. I heard
him tell the coachman one day that I was a little blackguard, and he was to let
me come and go as I liked.”

“If they
had whipped you soundly,” I said, “it might have made a good dog of you.”

“I’m good
enough now,” said Dandy, airily. “The young ladies who drove with my master
used to say that it was priggish and tiresome to be too good. To go on with my
story: I stayed with Mrs. Judge Tibbett till I got sick of her fussy ways. She
made a simpleton of herself over those poodles. Each one had a high chair at
the table, and a plate, and they always sat in these chairs and had meals with
her, and the servants all called them Master Bijou, and Master Tot, and Miss
Tiny, and Miss Fluff. One day they tried to make me sit in a chair, and I got
cross and bit Mrs. Tibbett, and she beat me cruelly, and her servants stoned me
away from the house.”

“Speaking
about fools, Dandy,” I said, “if it is polite to call a lady one, I should say
that that lady was one. Dogs shouldn’t be put out of their place. Why didn’t
she have some poor children at her table, and in her carriage, and let the dogs
run behind?”

“Easy to
see you don’t know New York,” said Dandy, with a laugh. “Poor children don’t
live with rich, old ladies. Mrs. Tibbett hated children, anyway. Then dogs like
poodles would get lost in the mud, or killed in the crowd if they ran behind a
carriage. Only knowing dogs like me can make their way about.”

I rather
doubted this speech; but I said nothing, and he went on patronizingly: “However,
Joe, thou hast reason, as the French say. Mrs. Judge Tibbett didn’t give her
dogs exercise enough. Their claws were as long as Chinamen’s nails, and the
hair grew over their pads, and they had red eyes and were always sick, and she
had to dose them with medicine, and call them her poor, little, ‘weeny-teeny sicky-wicky
doggies.’ Bah! I got disgusted with her.

“When I
left her, I ran away to her niece’s, Miss Ball’s. She was a sensible young
lady, and she used to scold her aunt for the way in which she brought up her
dogs. She was almost too sensible, for her pug and I were rubbed and scrubbed within
an inch of our lives, and had to go for such long walks that I got thoroughly
sick of them. A woman, whom the servants called Trotsey, came every morning,
and took the pug and me by our chains, and sometimes another dog or two, and
took us for long tramps in quiet streets. That was Trotsey’s business, to walk
dogs, and Miss Ball got a great many fashionable young ladies who could not
exercise their dogs, to let Trotsey have them, and they said that it made a
great difference in the health and appearance of their pets. Trotsey got
fifteen cents an hour for a dog. Goodness, what appetites those walks gave us,
and didn’t we make the dog biscuits disappear? But it was a slow life at Miss
Ball’s. We only saw her for a little while every day. She slept till noon.
After lunch she played with us for a little while in the greenhouse, then she was
off driving or visiting, and in the evening she always had company, or went to
a dance, or to the theatre. I soon made up my mind that I’d run away. I jumped
out of a window one fine morning, and ran home. I stayed there for a long time.
My mother had been run over by a cart and killed, and I wasn’t sorry. My master
never bothered his head about me, and I could do as I liked.

“One day
when I was having a walk, and meeting a lot of dogs that I knew, a little boy
came behind me, and before I could tell what he was doing, he had snatched me
up, and was running off with me. I couldn’t bite him, for he had stuffed some
of his rags in my mouth. He took me to a tenement house, in a part of the city
that I had never been in before. He belonged to a very poor family. My word, weren’t
they badly off—six children, and a mother, and father, all living in two tiny
rooms. Scarcely a bit of meat did I smell while I was there. I hated their
bread and molasses, and the place smelled so badly that I thought I should
choke.

“They kept
me shut up in their dirty rooms for several days; and the brat of a boy that
caught me slept with his arm around me at night. The weather was hot and
sometimes we couldn’t sleep, and they had to go up on the roof. After a while,
they chained me up in a filthy yard at the back of the house, and there I
thought I should go mad. I would have liked to bite them all to death, if I had
dared. It’s awful to be chained, especially for a dog like me that loves his
freedom. The flies worried me, and the noises distracted me, and my flesh would
fairly creep from getting no exercise. I was there nearly a month, while they were
waiting for a reward to be offered. But none came; and one day, the boy’s
father, who was a street peddler, took me by my chain and led me about the
streets till he sold me. A gentleman got me for his little boy, but I didn’t
like the look of him, so I sprang up and bit his hand, and he dropped the
chain, and I dodged boys and policemen and finally got home more dead than
alive, and looking like a skeleton. I had a good time for several weeks, and
then I began to get restless and was off again. But I’m getting tired; I want
to go to sleep.”

“You’re
not very polite,” I said, “to offer to tell a story, and then go to sleep
before you finish it.”

“Look out
for number one, my boy,” said Dandy, with a yawn; “for if you don’t, no one
else will,” and he shut his eyes and was fast asleep in a few minutes.

I sat and
looked at him. What a handsome, good-natured, worthless dog he was. A few days
later, he told me the rest of his history. After a great many wanderings, he
happened home one day just as his master’s yacht was going to sail, and they
chained him up till they went on board, so that he could be an amusement on the
passage to Fairport.

It was in
November that Dandy came to us, and he stayed all winter. He made fun of the
Morrises all the time, and said they had a dull, poky, old house, and he only
stayed because Miss Laura was nursing him. He had a little sore on his back
that she soon found out was mange. Her father said it was a bad disease for
dogs to have, and Dandy had better be shot; but she begged so hard for his
life, and said she would cure him in a few weeks that she was allowed to keep
him. Dandy wasn’t capable of getting really angry, but he was as disturbed
about having this disease as he could be about anything. He said that he had
got it from a little, mangy dog, that he had played with a few weeks before. He
was only with the dog a little while, and didn’t think he would take it, but it
seemed he knew what an easy thing it was to get.

Until he
got well he was separated from us. Miss Laura kept him up in the loft with the
rabbits, where we could not go; and the boys ran him around the garden for
exercise. She tried all kinds of cures for him, and I heard her say that
although it was a skin disease, his blood must be purified. She gave him some
of the pills that she made out of sulphur and butter for Jim, and Billy, and
me, to keep our coats silky and smooth. When they didn’t cure him, she gave him
a few drops of arsenic every day, and washed the sore, and, indeed his whole
body, with tobacco water or carbolic soap. It was the tobacco water that cured
him.

Miss Laura
always put on gloves when she went near him, and used a brush to wash him, for
if a person takes mange from a dog, they may lose their hair and their
eyelashes. But if they are careful, no harm comes from nursing a mangy dog, and
I have never known of any one taking the disease.

After a
time, Dandy’s sore healed, and he was set free. He was right glad, he said, for
he had got heartily sick of the rabbits. He used to bark at them and make them
angry, and they would run around the loft, stamping their hind feet at him, in
the funny way that rabbits do. I think they disliked him as much as he disliked
them. Jim and I did not get the mange. Dandy was not a strong dog, and I think
his irregular way of living made him take diseases readily. He would stuff
himself when he was hungry, and he always wanted rich food. If he couldn’t get
what he wanted at the Morrises’, he went out and stole, or visited the dumps at
the back of the town.

When he
did get ill, he was more stupid about doctoring himself than any dog that I
have ever seen. He never seemed to know when to eat grass or herbs, or a little
earth, that would have kept him in good condition. A dog should never be
without grass. When Dandy got ill he just suffered till he got well again, and
never tried to cure himself of his small troubles. Some dogs even know enough
to amputate their limbs. Jim told me a very interesting story of a dog the
Morrises once had, called Gyp, whose leg became paralyzed by a kick from a
horse. He knew the leg was dead, and gnawed it off nearly to the shoulder, and
though he was very sick for a time, yet in the end he got well.