Books: The Junior Classics Volume 8

S >> Selected and arranged by William Patten >> The Junior Classics Volume 8

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I am, as I have said, very particular about my food, and I don't
like thorns or thistles, so when I come across a plant with prickly
thorns on it, I carefully pick off the leaves with my tongue and
leave the thorns behind. I don't believe you could do that with
your tongue, but mine is a very useful tongue, and I shouldn't like
to change it with anybody. I sometimes find it rather awkward to
get anything on the ground, which is just between my front feet; I
have to put my legs very wide apart, and then bend down my neck,
like this. I suppose it does look rather funny, so I don't mind if
you do laugh at me. But then, you know, you look just as funny to
me, with your very small legs and no neck at all to speak of, and
no horns and no tail; I sometimes wonder how you can get on at all.

I come of a very old family, you know; I believe that you men have
known about me for a very long time.

If you will excuse me now, I think I will go in, as I am rather
afraid of catching cold; it wouldn't do for me to get a sore throat
or a stiff neck, would it? Good-by I I'm so pleased to have met
you.

PARROTS

Anonymous

Outside the Parrot-house there was a terrible noise; a screaming,
squawking, shouting, and crying, just as if the whole place were on
fire, or every Parrot were being killed.

The Macaws were sitting on their little perches out in the open
air. They were very proud of themselves, for they greatly enjoyed
being outside on a sunny, warm day; it was much better than being
in a cage, inside the house. They were all very fine birds; some
had blue heads and yellow bodies and green tails; others had red
heads and yellow tails; there were one or two who were quite white,
but they each one thought that he was a very fine fellow, and they
all shouted and screamed and squawked at the top of their voices.

And what was it all about? The greatest noise seemed to be going on
round one perch, where a big Macaw, with a blue and green head, was
talking very loud and very fast to a group of other birds close by,
and he seemed to be very angry about something. In one claw he held
a large apple, and if you had been near enough, you would have seen
that some one had evidently taken a big bite out of it. This was
what was making all the bother. Mr. Green-and-Blue-Head kept
shouting out: "Who bit my apple? Who bit my apple? I won't have it!
I won't stand it! It's too bad! It was all right this morning! I
believe it was you that did it!" (this was said to a white
Cockatoo). "Oh, you bad, wicked bird! What will become of you? Oh,
you bad thing! Go along, do! Who bit my apple?"

But the white Cockatoo began to scream at once. "'Oh, I didn't!" he
said. "How dare you say such a thing? Bite your apple, indeed! I
wouldn't do it. Don't call me names, because I won't have it. I'll
peck you, you bad bird! Who are you telling to get along? Bite your
apple, indeed! Squaw-aw-aw-aw-awk-k-k!"

Then a little, green Love Bird began to try to make peace. "It
doesn't matter very much, does it, Mr. Macaw?" she said. "It's not
a very big bite, though, of course, it must be very vexing. But I'm
sure Mr. Cockatoo didn't do it, if he says he didn't. But, please,
don't let us have any pecking. You'll find out, sometime, who did
it, I dare say."

"Oh, that's all very well for you," returned the Macaw, "but it
isn't your apple. Who bit my apple? Who bit my apple? You'd better
tell me, at once, whoever it was, and then, perhaps, I shan't be
quite so angry."

"Oh, do be quiet about your apple," put in another Macaw, with a
bright, red head. "Who cares about your apple? Why don't you enjoy
yourself out in the sun? I declare it quite makes me think of my
young days, sitting out here."

"Apple? Apple? Who said apple?" shouted another bird from the end
of the row. "Give me a bit! Give poor Polly a bit! Poor old Polly!
Pretty Poll! Give me a bit; don't be greedy! Who's got the apple?"

Then four or five others all began at once: "No, no, I want a bit!
I asked first! I want some, too! Over here! No, here you are! This
way with the apple! Hurry up! Be quick! Where's that apple?"

Just then a lady and a little girl and a little boy came along past
where the Parrots were sitting. Instantly all the birds began to
chatter and scream louder than ever.

"Look, look at them!" they called out. "Did you ever see anything
so absurd? Where are their feathers? What ridiculous beaks! I don't
believe they could crack nuts, if they tried ever so hard. They
haven't got any wings. Oh, how funny! Ha, ha, ha! Go away, do, you
ugly creatures!"

The little girl and boy and the lady didn't understand what they
were saying, of course. But the lady said: "Come along quickly,
children, and let us get past these noisy birds; they quite give me
a headache with their screaming."

"Well, did you ever!" said the Parrots. "Calling us noisy birds!
I'm sure we're not noisy. They haven't got green heads and red
tails; I don't see what they think so much of themselves for! Well,
I'm glad they've gone! If they'd come near me, I'd have given them
a bite! Silly things! Squawk-k-k!"

The Macaw with the apple was still very sad. No one took any notice
of him, and no one would tell him who had bitten his precious
apple. All at once, it slipped out of his claw and fell on to the
ground. He tried to reach it, but the chain which tied him to his
perch was not long enough, and he couldn't get it. All the other
Parrots began to scream with laughter at him; they danced up and
down and flapped their wings and shouted, and made more noise than
ever. Then some Sparrows flew down and began to peck at the apple,
and this made the Macaw angrier than ever.

"H'm!" said one little Sparrow, looking up at the Macaw, with a
twinkle in his eye; "quite a good apple! I wonder that you threw it
away. Who's been biting it?"

The Macaw screamed and scolded, but it was no good. If he hadn't
talked so much, he might have eaten his apple in peace. Now, he had
lost it altogether.

And he never found out who bit his apple.

RAB AND HIS FRIENDS

By John Brown, M.D.

Four and thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up
Infirmary street from the high school, our heads together, and our
arms intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how or why.

When we got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a
crowd at the Tron-church. "A dog fight!" shouted Bob, and was off;
and so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over
before we got up! And is not this boy nature! and human nature,
too? and don't we all wish a house on fire not to be out before we
see it? Dogs like fighting; old Isaac says they "delight" in it,
and for the best of all reasons; and boys are not cruel because
they like to see the fight. They see three of the great cardinal
virtues of dog or man--courage, endurance, and skill--in intense
action. This is very different from a love of making dogs fight,
and enjoying, and aggravating, and making gain by their pluck. A
boy--be he ever so fond himself of fighting, if he be a good boy,
hates and despises all this, but he would have run off with Bob and
me fast enough; it is a natural, and a not wicked, interest that
all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in action.

Does any curious and finely-ignorant woman wish to know how Bob's
eye at a glance announced a dog-fight to his brain? He did not, he
could not see the dogs fighting; it was a flash of an inference, a
rapid induction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting, is a
crowd masculine mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate
woman, fluttering wildly round the outside, and using her tongue
and her hands freely upon the men, as so many "brutes"; it is a
crowd annular, compact and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its
eyes and its heads all bent downward and inward, to one common
focus.

Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over; a small
thoroughbred, white bull-terrier, is busy throttling a large
shepherd's dog, unaccustomed to war, but not to be trifled with.
They are hard at it; the scientific little fellow doing his work in
great style, his pastoral enemy fighting wildly, but with the
sharpest of teeth and a great courage. Science and breeding,
however, soon had their own; the Game Chicken, as the premature Bob
called him, working his way up, took his final grip of poor
Yarrow's throat--and he lay gasping and done for. His master, a
brown, handsome, big young shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would have
liked to have knocked down any man, would "drink up Esil, or eat a
crocodile," for that part, if he had a chance; it was no use
kicking the little dog; that would only make him hold the closer.
Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls, of the best possible
ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near, and many cried
for it who might have got it from the well at Blackfriars Wynd.
"Bite the tail!" and a large, vague, benevolent, middle aged man,
more desirous than wise, with some struggle got the bushy end of
Yarrow's tail into his ample mouth, and bit it with all his might.
This was more than enough for the much-enduring, much-perspiring
shepherd, who, with a gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered
a terrific facer upon our large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged
friend--who went down like a shot.

Still the Chicken holds; death not far off. "Snuff! a pinch of
snuff!" observed a calm, highly-dressed young buck, with an
eye-glass in his eye. "Snuff, indeed!" growled the angry crowd,
affronted and glaring. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" again observes
the buck, but with more urgency; whereupon were produced several
open boxes, and from a mull which may have been at Culloden, he
took a pinch, knelt down, and presented it to the nose of the
Chicken. The laws of physiology and of snuff take their course; the
Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free.

The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his
arms--comforting him.

But the bull-terrier's blood is up, and his soul unsatisfied; he
grips the first dog he meets, and discovering she is not a dog, in
Homeric phrase, he makes a brief sort of _amende_, and is off.
The boys, with Bob and me at their head, are after him; down Niddry
street he goes, bent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an arrow--Bob
and I, and our small men, panting behind.

There, under the single arch of the South bridge is a huge mastiff,
sauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in
his pockets; he is old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland
bull, and has the Shakespearian dewlaps shaking as he goes.

The Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens on his throat.
To our astonishment, the great creature does nothing but stand
still, hold himself up, and roar--yes, roar; a long, serious,
remonstrative roar. How is this? Bob and I are up to them. _He is
muzzled!_ The bailies had proclaimed a general muzzling, and his
master, studying strength and economy mainly, had encompassed his
huge jaws in a home-made apparatus, constructed out of the leather
of some ancient breechin. His mouth was open as far as it could;
his lips curled up in rage--a sort of terrible grin; his teeth
gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap across his mouth
tense as a bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation and
surprise; his roar asking us all round, "Did you ever see the like
of this?"

He looked a statue of anger and astonishment, done in Aberdeen
granite.

We soon had a crowd; the Chicken held on. "A knife!" cried Bob; and
a cobbler gave him his knife; you know the kind of knife, worn away
obliquely to a point, and always keen. I put its edge to the tense
leather; it ran before it; and then!--one sudden jerk of that
enormous head, a sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise, and
the bright and fierce little fellow is dropped, limp, and dead. A
solemn pause; this was more than any of us had bargained for. I
turned the little fellow over, and saw he was quite dead; the
mastiff had taken him by the small of the back, like a rat, and
broken it.

He looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed and amazed; snuffed
him all over, stared at him, and taking a sudden thought, turned
round and trotted off. Bob took the dead dog up, and said, "John,
we'll bury him after tea." "Yes," said I, and was off after the
mastiff. He made up the Cowgate at a rapid swing; he had forgotten
some engagement. He turned up the Candlemaker Row, and stopped at
the Harrow Inn.

There was a carrier's cart ready to start, and a keen, thin,
impatient, black-a-vised little man, his hand at his gray horse's
head looking about angrily for something. "Rab, ye thief!" said he,
aiming a kick at my great friend, who drew cringing up, and
avoiding the heavy shoe with more agility than dignity, and
watching his master's eye, slunk dismayed under the cart--his ears
down, and as much as he had of tail down, too.

What a man this must be--thought I--to whom my tremendous hero
turns tail! The carrier saw the muzzle hanging, cut and useless,
from his neck, and I eagerly told him the story which Bob and I
always thought, and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir
Walter, alone were worthy to rehearse. The severe little man was
mitigated, and condescended to say, "Rab, ma man, puir Rabbie"
--whereupon the stump of a tail rose up, the ears were cocked, the
eyes filled, and were comforted; the two friends were reconciled.
"Hupp!" and a stroke of the whip were given to Jess; and off went
the three.

Bob and I buried the Game Chicken that night (we had not much of a
tea) in the back-green of his house in Melville street, No. 17,
with considerable gravity and silence; and being at the time in the
Iliad, and, like all boys, Trojans, we called him Hector of course.

* * * * *

Six years have passed--a long time for a boy and a dog: Bob Ainslie
is off to the wars; I am a medical student, and clerk at Minto
House Hospital.

Rab I saw almost every week, on the Wednesday; and we had much
pleasant intimacy. I found the way to his heart by frequent
scratching of his huge head, and an occasional bone. When I did not
notice him he would plant himself straight before me, and stand
wagging that bud of a tail, and looking up, with his head a little
to the one side. His master I occasionally saw; he used to call me
"Maister John," but was laconic as any Spartan.

One fine October afternoon, I was leaving the hospital, when I saw
the large gate open, and in walked Rab with that great and easy
saunter of his. He looked as if taking general possession of the
place; like the Duke of Wellington entering a subdued city,
satiated with victory and peace. After him came Jess, now white
from age, with her cart; and in it a woman, carefully wrapped
up--the carrier leading the horse anxiously, and looking back. When
he saw me, James (for his name was James Noble) made a curt and
grotesque "boo," and said, "Maister John, this is the mistress;
she's got a trouble in her breest--some kind of an income we're
thinkin'."

By this time I saw the woman's face; she was sitting on a sack
filled with straw, her husband's plaid round her, and his big-coat,
with its large white metal buttons, over her feet.

I never saw a more unforgettable face--pale, serious,
_lonely_, delicate, sweet, without being at all what we call
fine. She looked sixty, and had on a mutch, white as snow, with its
black ribbon; her silvery, smooth hair setting off her dark-gray
eyes--eyes such as one sees only twice or thrice in a lifetime,
full of suffering, full also of the overcoming of it; her eyebrows
black and delicate, and her mouth firm, patient, and contented,
which few mouths ever are.

As I have said, I never saw a more beautiful countenance, or a more
subdued or settled quiet. "Ailie," said James, "this is Maister
John, the young doctor; Rab's freend, ye ken. We often speak aboot
you, doctor." She smiled, and made a movement, but said nothing;
and prepared to come down, putting her plaid aside and rising. Had
Solomon, in all his glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at
his palace gate, he could not have done it more daintily, more
tenderly, more like a gentleman, than did James the Howgate
carrier, when he lifted down Ailie, his wife.

The contrast of his small, swarthy, weather-beaten, keen, worldly
face to hers--pale, subdued, and beautiful--was something
wonderful. Rab looked on concerned and puzzled, but ready for
anything that might turn up--were it to strangle the nurse, the
porter, or even me. Ailie and he seemed great friends.

"As I was sayin', she's got a kind o' trouble in her breest, doctor;
wull ye tak' a look at it?" We walked into the consulting-room,
all four; Rab grim and comic, willing to be happy and confidential
if cause could be shown, willing also to be the reverse on the same
terms. Ailie sat down, undid her open gown and her lawn handkerchief
round her neck, and, without a word, showed me her right breast.
I looked at and examined it carefully, she and James watching me,
and Rab eying all three. What could I say? There it was that had
once been so soft, so shapely, so white, so gracious and bountiful,
so "full of all blessed conditions"--hard as a stone, a centre of
horrid pain, making that pale face, with its gray, lucid, reasonable
eyes, and its sweet resolved mouth, express the full measure of
suffering overcome. Why was that gentle, modest, sweet woman,
clean and lovable, condemned by God to bear such a burden?

I got her away to bed. "May Rab and me bide?" said James.
"_You_ may; and Rab, if he will behave himself." "I'se warrant
he's do that, doctor;" and in slunk the faithful beast. I wish you
could have seen him. There are no such dogs now. He belonged to a
lost tribe. As I have said, he was brindled, and gray like Rubislaw
granite; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body
thickset, like a little bull--a sort of compressed Hercules of a
dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had
a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker
than any night, a tooth or two--being all he had--gleaming out of
his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of old
wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye
out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's
father's; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, and
in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear,
which was forever unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that
bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be
said to be long, being as broad as long--the mobility, the
instantaneousness of that bud were very funny and surprising, and
its expressive twinklings and winkings, the intercommunications
between the eye, the ear, and it, were of the oddest and swiftest.

Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great size; and having fought
his way all along the road to absolute supremacy, he was as mighty
in his own line as Julius Caesar or the Duke of Wellington, and had
the gravity of all great fighters.

You must have often observed the likeness of certain men to certain
animals, and of certain dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab
without thinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller. The
same large, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, honest countenance,
the same deep inevitable eye, the same look--as of thunder asleep,
but ready--neither a dog nor a man to be trifled with.

Next day, my master, the surgeon, examined Ailie. There was no
doubt it must kill her, and soon. It could be removed--it might
never return--it would give her speedy relief--she should have it
done. She curtsied, looked at James, and said, "When?" "To-morrow,"
said the kind surgeon--a man of few words. She and James and Rab
and I retired. I noticed that he and she spoke a little, but seemed
to anticipate everything in each other. The following day at noon,
the students came in, hurrying up the great stair. At the first
landing-place, on a small well-known blackboard, was a bit of paper
fastened by wafers and many remains of old wafers beside it. On the
paper were the words--"An operation to-day. J. B., _Clerk_"

Up ran the youths, eager to secure good places; in they crowded,
full of interest and talk. "What's the case? Which side is it?"

Don't think them heartless; they are neither better nor worse than
you or I; they get over their professional horrors, and into their
proper work', and in them pity--as an _emotion_, ending in
itself or at best in tears and a long-drawn breath, lessens, while
pity as a _motive_, is quickened, and gains power and purpose.
It is well for poor human nature that it is so.

The operating theatre is crowded; much talk and fun, and all the
cordiality and stir of youth. The surgeon with his staff of
assistants is there. In comes Ailie; one look at her quiets and
abates the eager students. The beautiful old woman is too much for
them. They sit down, and are dumb, and gaze at her. These rough
boys feel the power of her presence. She walks in quickly, but
without haste; dressed in her mutch, her neckerchief, her white
dimity short-gown, her black bombazine petticoat, showing her white
worsted stockings and her carpet-shoes. Behind her was James with
Rab. James sat down in the distance, and took that huge and noble
head between his knees. Rab looked perplexed and dangerous; forever
cocking his ear and dropping it as fast.

Ailie stepped up on a seat, and laid herself on the table, as her
friend the surgeon told her; arranged herself, gave a rapid look at
James, shut her eyes, rested herself on me, and took my hand. The
operation was at once begun; it was necessarily slow; and
chloroform--one of God's best gifts to his suffering children--was
then unknown. The surgeon did his work. The pale face showed its
pain, but was still and silent. Rab's soul was working within him;
he saw that something strange was going on--blood flowing from his
mistress, and she suffering; his ragged ear was up, and
importunate; he growled and gave now and then a sharp impatient
yelp; he would have liked to have done something to that man. But
James had him firm, and gave him a _glower_ (Scotch word--a
hard stare) from time to time, and an intimation of a possible
kick;--all the better for James, it kept his eye and his mind off
Ailie.

It is over; she is dressed, steps gently and decently down from the
table, looks for James; then turning to the surgeon and the
students, she curtsies--and in a low, clear voice, begs their
pardon if she has behaved ill. The students--all of us--wept like
children; the surgeon wrapped her up carefully--and resting on James
and me, Ailie went to her room, Rab following. We put her to bed.
James took off his heavy shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt and
toe-capt, and put them carefully under the table, saying, "Maister
John, I'm for nane o' yer strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be
her nurse, and I'll gang aboot on my stockin' soles as canny as
pussy." And so he did; and handy and clever, and swift and tender
as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell, peremptory little man.
Everything she got he gave her; he seldom slept; and often I saw
his small, shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her. As
before, they spoke little.

Rab behaved well, never moving, showing us how meek and gentle he
could be, and occasionally, in his sleep, letting us know that he
was demolishing some adversary. He took a walk with me every day,
generally to the Candlemaker Row; but he was sombre and mild;
declined doing battle, though some fit cases offered, and indeed
submitted to sundry indignities; and was always very ready to turn
and came faster back, and trotted up the stair with much lightness,
and went straight to that door.

Jess, the mare, had been sent, with her weatherworn cart, to
Howgate, and had doubtless her own dim and placid meditations and
confusions, on the absence of her master and Rab, and her unnatural
freedom from the road and her cart.

For some days Ailie did well. The wound healed "by the first
intention"; for as James said, "Oor Ailie's skin's ower clean to
beil." The students came in quiet and anxious, and surrounded her
bed. She said she liked to see their young, honest faces. The
surgeon dressed her, and spoke to her in his own short, kind way,
pitying her through his eyes, Rab and James outside the circle--Rab
being now reconciled, and even cordial, and having made up his mind
that as yet nobody required worrying, but as you may suppose
_semper paratus_.

So far well; but four days after the operation my patient had a
sudden and long shivering, a "groosin'," as she called it. I saw
her soon after; her eyes were too bright, her cheek colored; she
was restless, and ashamed of being so; the balance was lost;
mischief had begun. On looking at the wound, a blush of red told
the secret; her pulse was rapid, her breathing anxious and quick,
she wasn't herself, as she said, and was vexed at her restlessness.
We tried what we could, James did everything, was everywhere; never
in the way, never out of it. Rab subsided under the table into a
dark place, and was motionless, all but his eye, which followed
every one. Ailie got worse; began to wander in her mind, gently;
was more demonstrative in her ways to James, rapid in her
questions, and sharp at times. He was vexed, and said, "She was
never that way afore; no, never." For a time she knew her head was
wrong, and was always asking our pardon--the dear, gentle old
woman; then delirium set in strong, without pause. Her brain gave
way, and then came that terrible spectacle.

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