at life is not worth living. But a
number of well-authenticated cases have come to my observation which
show that the dog is rapidly learning this supreme accomplishment. A dog
at Warwick, New York, whose master had neglected him for a new-comer,
became morose and sulky, took to watching the railway-trains with great
interest, and one day threw himself under a passing car and was crushed
to death. Another, in Marseilles, whose owner had avoided him from fear
of hydrophobia, and which had been driven from the door of a friend of
his master, ran straight for the river and plunged in, never to rise
till he was dead. A Newfoundland dog on the relief-ship Bear, and two or
three of the Esquimaux dogs belonging to the relief expedition, drowned
themselves deliberately, after showing great depression for several
days. Dr. Lauder Lindsay, in his "Mind in the Lower Animals," tells of a
Newfoundland that, being refused an accustomed outing with the children
and being playfully whipped with a handkerchief, took it so deeply to
heart that he went and drowned himself by resolutely holding his head
under water in a shallow ditch.

But, seriously, it is a nice psychological question whether there is
something human about dogs, or something canine about men. At any rate,
it may well be asked whether it is really the dog-nature which attracts
us, and not rather a somewhat of the human in the brute. For when we see
the dog in the man we are repelled.

The above is undoubtedly the most honorable, if not the most obvious,
reason why the dog has succeeded in winning the companionship, and even
the affection, of so large a portion of mankind. Another reason lies in
the fact that, as a dog, he has been wonderfully improved. There is no
denying that he comes of a bad stock. As already intimated, his "family"
includes, besides himself, the wolf, the fox, and the jackal, with the
hyena as a sort of step-brother. But he has proved himself "the flower
of the family," and, like all flowers, he has been "cultivated" and
developed, differentiated in species, till a grand bench-show will
display all the varieties, from little fluff balls, "small enough to put
in your waistcoat-pocket," to the splendid deerhound, valued at ten
thousand dollars, with his "silver-gray hair, muscular flanks, and calm,
resolute eyes." I shall never forget coming suddenly, in the streets of
Montgomery, Alabama, upon one of the veritable bloodhounds which were
employed once