a yearning
To worship the highest a dog may know.

When dawn brought the shepherds, each to his own,
Melampo, Lupina and Cubil[=o]n
Bounded to meet them,
Frolicked to greet them,
Eager to serve them for love alone.

GROWING UP

"His years were full; his years were joyous; why
Must love be sorrow, when his gracious name
Recalls his lovely life of limb and eye?"

--Swinburne's _At a Dog's Grave_.

Now that we realized not only that we had adopted Sigurd but that
Sigurd had adopted us, we entered into an ever deepening enjoyment of
our dog. Be it understood that we were teachers, writers, servants of
causes, boards, committees, mere professional women, with too little
leisure for the home we loved. Had our hurried days given opportunity
for the fine art of mothering we would have cherished a child instead
of a collie, but Sigurd throve on neglect and saved us from turning
into plaster images by making light of all our serious concerns. No
academic dignities impressed his happy irreverence.

"What is Sigurd slinging about there on the lawn?" I asked on his first
Commencement morning. "It looks as if he had a muskrat by the tail."

Joy-of-Life glanced apprehensively from the window to the bed, on which
she had carefully laid out a dean's glistening regalia.

"My cap!" she ejaculated and dashed downstairs and out of the door and
away over the grass after a frolicsome bandit who knew of no better use
for a mortar-board--perhaps there is none--than to spin it around by
its gilt tassel.

He had no regard for manuscript, after a thorough investigation had
convinced him that it was not good to eat, and made no scruple of
breaking in on our most absorbed moments with an insistent demand for
play. Whatever the game might be, he infused it with dramatic quality,
turning every romp into a thrilling adventure. He liked to pretend that
he was Jack the Giant-Killer and would crouch and growl and bristle and
finally hurl himself upon some ogre of a wastepaper basket,
overthrowing it in the first onslaught and then worrying its scattered
contents with mimic fury. For punishment, we would clap the basket
tight over his head, and he would back into a corner, indulging in all
sorts of profane remarks while he pawed and shook that insulting helmet
off, but carefully, for he clearly understood that, though what it held
was subject to his teeth, the basket itself must not be h