and rapid runner,
far ahead. Suddenly we saw him tearing back in terror. Without waiting
for us to pull up, he bounded over the wheel into the phaeton and
pressed his shaking body close against our knees. As we drove on, we
looked to right and left for the hippogrif that had so appalled him,
and presently beheld it,--a riderless bicycle leaning against a garden
wall.

THE HEART OF A DOG

Where did they learn
The miracle of love,
These dogs that turn
From food and sleep at our light-whistled call,
Eager to fling
Their all
Of speed and grace into glad following?

Not the wolf pack
Taught savage instinct love,
For there to lack
The power to slay was to be hunger-slain;
Once down, a prey,
A stain
Of crimson on the snow, a tuft of gray.

Was it from us
They learned such loyal love
Magnanimous,
Meeting our injuries with trustful eyes?
Are we so true,
So wise,
So broken-hearted when love's day is through?

Where did they learn
The miracle of love?
Though beauty burn
In rainbow, foam and flame, these have not heard,
Nor trees and flowers,
That word.
Only our dogs would give their lives for ours.

HOME STUDIES

"Thou know'st whate'er I see, read, learn,
Related to thy species, friend,
I tell thee, hoping it may turn
To thine advantage--so attend."

--Caroline Bowles Southey's _Conte a Mon Chien_.

In pursuance of this curriculum, while Joy-of-Life sat on the floor
beside Sigurd for a good-night brush of his gleaming coat, I would read
to them from any canine classic that chanced to be at hand,--_Rab and
His Friends_, _Bobby of Greyfriars_, _My Dogs of the Northland_, _The
Call of the Wild_, _Bob_, _Son of Battle_, John Muir's vivid story of
his Stickeen, Maeterlinck's brooding biography of his Pelleas with the
bulging forehead of Socrates, or De Amicis' touching account of his
blessed mongrel, Dick. When Sigurd grew restless under his toilet and
wanted to jump up and play, we would tell him how the great dog Kitmer,
the only animal besides Balaam's ass and the camel that carried Mahomet
on his flight from Mecca to be admitted into the Moslem paradise, had
"stretched forth his forelegs" for three hundred years in the mouth of
a cave, mounting guard over the Seven Sleepers.

Joy-of-Life, who was an historian as well as an economist and had
written, despi