rom strangers; a nostril large enough to snuff a wild
duck across the meadows; knows how to shake hands, and can talk with head,
and ear, and tail; and, save an unreasonable antipathy to cats, is perfect,
and always goes with me on my walk out of town.

He knows more than a great many people. Never do we take a walk but the
poodles, and the rat-terriers, and the grizzly curs with stringy hair and
damp nose, get after him. They tumble off the front door step and out of
the kennels, and assault him front and rear. I have several times said to
him (not loud enough for Presbytery to hear), "Nick, why do you stand all
this? Go at them!" He never takes my advice. He lets them bark and snap,
and passes on unprovokedly without sniff or growl. He seems to say, "They
are not worth minding. Let them bark. It pleases them and don't hurt me. I
started out for a six-mile tramp, and I cannot be diverted. Newfoundlanders
like me have a mission. My father pulled three drowning men to the beach,
and my uncle on my mother's side saved a child from the snow. If you have
anything brave, or good, or great for me to do, just clap your hand and
point out the work, and I will do it, but I cannot waste my time on
rat-terriers."

If Nick had put that in doggerel, I think it would have read well. It was
wise enough to become the dogma of a school. Men and women are more easily
diverted from the straight course than is Nick. No useful people escape
being barked at. Mythology represents Cerberus a monster dog at the mouth
of hell, but he has had a long line of puppies. They start out at editors,
teachers, philanthropists and Christians. If these men go right on their
way, they perform their mission and get their reward, but one-half of them
stop and make attempt to silence the literary, political and ecclesiastical
curs that snap at them.

Many an author has got a drop of printers' ink spattered in his eye, and
collapsed. The critic who had lobsters for supper the night before, and
whose wife in the morning had parted his hair on the wrong side, snarled at
the new book, and the time that the author might have spent in new work he
squanders in gunning for critics. You might better have gone straight
ahead, Nick! You will come to be estimated for exactly what you are worth.
If a fool, no amount of newspaper or magazine puffery can set you up; and
if you are useful, no amount of newspaper or magazine detraction can keep
you down. For every position th