hands on the barrow behind, as I would unnatural parents.
Pegasus harnessed to the Thracian herdsman's plough was no more of a
desecration. I fancy the poor dog seems to feel the monstrosity of the
performance, and, in sheer shame for his master, forgivingly tries to
assume it is PLAY; and I have seen a little "colley" running along,
barking, and endeavoring to leap and gambol in the shafts, before a load
that any one out of this locality would have thought the direst cruelty.
Nor do the older or more powerful dogs seem to become accustomed to
it. When his cruel taskmaster halts with his wares, instantly the dog,
either by sitting down in his harness, or crawling over the shafts, or
by some unmistakable dog-like trick, utterly scatters any such delusion
of even the habit of servitude. The few of his race who do not work in
this ducal city seem to have lost their democratic canine sympathies,
and look upon him with something of that indifferent calm with which
yonder officer eyes the road-mender in the ditch below him. He loses
even the characteristics of species. The common cur and mastiff look
alike in harness. The burden levels all distinctions. I have said that
he was generally sincere in his efforts. I recall but one instance to
the contrary. I remember a young colley who first attracted my attention
by his persistent barking. Whether he did this, as the plough-boy
whistled, "for want of thought," or whether it was a running protest
against his occupation, I could not determine, until one day I noticed,
that, in barking, he slightly threw up his neck and shoulders, and that
the two-wheeled barrow-like vehicle behind him, having its weight evenly
poised on the wheels by the trucks in the hands of its driver, enabled
him by this movement to cunningly throw the center of gravity and the
greater weight on the man,--a fact which that less sagacious brute never
discerned. Perhaps I am using a strong expression regarding his driver.
It may be that the purely animal wants of the dog, in the way of food,
care, and shelter, are more bountifully supplied in servitude than in
freedom; becoming a valuable and useful property, he may be cared for
and protected as such (an odd recollection that this argument had been
used forcibly in regard to human slavery in my own country strikes me
here); but his picturesqueness and poetry are gone, and I cannot
help thinking that the people who have lost this gentle, sympathetic,
characteristic