Beautiful Joe by Marshall Saunders (most important books of all time txt) 📕

CHAPTER XXXVI (`DANDY THE TRAMP)

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 some one

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 to-morrow."

 

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 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 as 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 faith, 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