The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too | Page 3

a painter I think I should have no
difficulty in presenting to my readers this pleasant "family party." The
very room in which these meetings were held comes as strongly to my
recollection as the various young and old dogs who were wont to
assemble there. Plainly furnished, it yet boasted some articles of luxury;
works of statuary and painting, presented to old Job by those who
admired his goodness, or had been the objects of his devotion.
One of these, a statuette representing a fast little dog upon a tasteful
pedestal, used often to excite my curiosity, the more because Job
showed no inclination to gratify it. I managed, however, at last to get at
the incident which made Job the possessor of this comical little figure,
and as the circumstance worthily illustrates his character, I will relate it

as the anecdote was told to me.
It was once a fashion in Caneville, encouraged by puppies of the
superior classes, to indulge in habits of so strange a nature as to meet
on stated occasions for the express purpose of trying their skill and
strength in set combats; and although the most frightful consequences
often ensued, these assemblies were still held until put down by the
sharp tooth of the law. The results which ensued were not merely
dangerous to life, but created such a quarrelsome disposition, that many
of these dogs were never happy but when fighting; and the force
granted them by nature for self-defence was too often used most
wantonly to the annoyance of their neighbours. It one day happened
that Job was sitting quietly on a steep bank of the river where it runs
into the wood at some distance from the city, at one moment watching
the birds as they skimmed over the water, at another following the
movements of a large fish, just distinguishable from the height, as it
rose at the flies that dropped upon the stream; when three dogs, among
the most celebrated fighters of the time, passed by that way. Two of
them were of the common class, about the size and weight of Job; the
other was a young puppy of good family, whose tastes had
unfortunately led him into such low society. Seeing the mild expression
of Job's face, and confident in their own prowess, they resolved to
amuse themselves at his expense, and to this end drew near to him.
Unobserved by their intended victim, with a rapid motion they
endeavoured to push him head foremost into the river, Master Puppy
having dexterously seized hold of his tail to make the somersault more
complete. Job, although thus unexpectedly set upon from behind, was
enabled, by the exertion of great strength, to defeat the object of his
assailants. In the struggle which ensued, his adversaries discovered that,
in spite of their boasted skill, they had more than found their match.
One of them got rolled over into the stream, out of which he managed
to crawl with considerable difficulty half a mile lower down; the
second took to his heels, with his coat torn, and his person otherwise
disordered; and the fashionable Pup, to his great horror, found himself
seized in the formidable jaws of the unoffending but own angry dog.
Imagine how much his terror was increased when Job, carrying him, as
I would a mouse, to the edge of the precipitous bank, held him sheer

over the roaring river. The poor fellow could not swim, he had a perfect
antipathy to the water, and he felt himself at that moment on the point
of being consigned to certain death without a chance of safety. But he
did not know the noble heart of the animal he had offended. Job let him
feel for a few dreadful seconds the danger to which he had been so
thoughtlessly and in joke about to consign himself, and then placed him
in safety on the bank, with the admonition to reflect for the future on
the probable result of his diversions before he indulged in them, and to
consider whether, although amusing to himself, such games might not
be fatal to the animals on whom they were played off. The shivering
puppy was too much alarmed at the time to attend either to the
magnanimity of his antagonist or the wisdom of his advice, but they
were evidently not lost upon him. Many can bear testimony to the
change which that hour wrought in his character; and some weeks after
the event, Job received that statue of his little adversary, which had so
often struck me, executed by a native artist, with a long letter in verse, a
beautiful specimen of doggrel; indeed, gifts both equally creditable to
the sculptor and the writer, and most honourable to the animal in whose
favour