I recalled Mrs. Potts's paper on "The Lesson of Greek Art," which had
enriched two columns of the _Argus_ after its reading to the ladies of
the Literary and Home Study Club. It seemed to me that the Greeks must
have divined this important secret of the vegetable world--the secret of
ageless time--and that therein lay the charm of them; that spirit of
ever freshening joy which they chiselled and sang into tangible grace
for us of a later and heavier age.

At the moment I was on the porch, waiting for my coffee, and my thought
seemed to be shared by Jim, my bony young setter, who, being but a scant
year old, had not yet forgotten the lesson of Greek art. Over the grassy
stretch before the porch he chased robins tirelessly, though with
indifferent success. His was a spirit truly Greek. I knew it by reason
of his inexhaustible enthusiasm for this present sport after a year's
proving that chased birds will rise strangely but expertly into air that
no dog can climb by any device of whining, leaping, or straining.

Living on into the Renaissance, I saw that Jim would be taught the
grievous thing called wisdom--would learn his limitations and to form
habits tamely contrary to his natural Greek likings. Then would he
honorably neglect rabbits and all fur, cease pointing droves of pigs,
and quit the silly chase of robins. Under check-cord and spike-collar he
would become a fast and stylish dog, clean-cut in his bird work,
perhaps a field-trial winner. He would learn to take reproof amiably,
to "heel" at a word, to respect the whistle at any distance, to be
steady to shot and wing, to retrieve promptly from land or water, and
never to bolt or range beyond control or be guilty of false pointing.

I knew that coercion, steadily and tactfully applied, would thus educate
him, for was he not of champion ancestry, wearing his pedigree in his
looks, with the narrow shoulders so desirable and so rarely found, with
just the right number of hairs at the end of his tail, the forelegs
properly feathered, the feet and ankles strong, the right amount of
leather in his ear to the fraction of an inch,--a dog, in short, of
beauty, style, speed, nose, and brains?

But in this full moment of a glad morning I resolved that Jim should
never know the Renaissance; he should never emerge from what Mrs. Potts
had gracefully described as "the golden age of Pericles."

To the end of his days he should be blithely, naively Greek; a dog of
wretched fie