as
well as many others which meant something else, but which I had heard
addressed to dogs; and I laid the flattering unction to my soul that I
could drive as well as a Korak, if not better. To my inexperienced eye
it was as easy as losing money in California mining stocks. On this
day, therefore, as the road was good and the weather propitious, I
determined to put my ideas, original as well as acquired, to the test
of practice. I accordingly motioned my Korak driver to take a back
seat and deliver up to me the insignia of office. I observed in the
expression of his lips, as he handed me the spiked stick, a sort of
latent smile of ridicule, which indicated a very low estimate of my
dog-driving abilities; but I treated it as knowledge should always
treat the sneers of ignorance--with silent contempt; and seating
myself firmly astride the sledge back of the arch, I shouted to the
dogs, "Noo! Pashol!" My voice failed to produce the startling effect
that I had anticipated. The leader--a grim, bluff Nestor of a
dog--glanced carelessly over his shoulder and very perceptibly
slackened his pace. This sudden and marked contempt for my authority
on the part of the dogs did more than all the sneers of the Koraks to
shake my confidence in my own skill. But my resources were not yet
exhausted, and I hurled monosyllable, dissyllable, and polysyllable
at their devoted heads, shouted "Akh! Te shelma! Proclataya takaya!
Smatree! Ya tibi dam!" but all in vain; the dogs were evidently
insensible to rhetorical fireworks of this description, and manifested
their indifference by a still slower gait. As I poured out upon them
the last vial of my verbal wrath, Dodd, who understood the language
that I was so recklessly using, drove slowly up, and remarked
carelessly, "You swear pretty well for a beginner." Had the ground
opened beneath me I should have been less astonished. "Swear! I swear!
You don't mean to say that I've been swearing?"--"Certainly you have,
like a pirate." I dropped my spiked stick in dismay. Were these the
principles of dog-driving which I had evolved out of the depths of my
_moral_ consciousness? They seemed rather to have come from the depths
of my _im_moral _un_consciousness. "Why, you reckless reprobate!"
I exclaimed impressively, "didn't you teach me those very words
yourself?"--"Certainly I did," was the unabashed reply; "but you
didn't ask me what they meant; you asked how to pronounce them
correctly, and I told you.