"What is the saddest sight in everyday life? I don't mean the most gloomily tragic, but the saddest?"
A frivolous member of the fireside group cited a helpless man between two quarreling women. A sentimentalist said:
Nobody agreed with him of course; but that was because none of the others chanced to know dogs--to know their psychology--their souls, if you prefer. The dog-man was right. A lost dog in a city street is the very saddest and most hopeless sight in all a city street's abounding everyday sadness.
A man between two quarreling women is an object piteous enough, heaven knows. Yet his plight verges too much on the grotesque to be called sad.
A lost child?--No. Let a child stand in the middle of a crowded sidewalk and begin to cry. In one minute fifty amateur and professional rescuers have flocked to the Lost One's aid. An hour, at most, suffices to bring it in touch with its frenzied guardians.
A lost dog?--Yes. No succoring cohort surges to the relief. A gang of boys, perhaps, may give chase, but assuredly not in kindness. A policeman seeking a record for "mad dog" shooting--a professional dog-catcher in quest of his dirty fee--these will show marked attention to the wanderer. But, again, not in kindness.
A dog, at some turn in the street, misses his master--doubles back to where the human demigod was last seen--darts ahead once more to find him, through the press of other human folk--halts, hesitates, begins the same maneuvers all over again; then stands, shaking in panic at his utter aloneness.
Get the look in his eyes, then--you who do not mind seeing such things--and answer, honestly: Is there anything sadder on earth? All this, before the pursuit of boys and the fever of thirst and the final knowledge of desolation have turned him from a handsome and prideful pet into a slinking outcast.
Yes, a lost dog is the saddest thing that can meet the gaze of a man or woman who understands dogs. As perhaps my story may help to show--or perhaps not.
Lad had been brushed and bathed, daily, for a week, until his mahogany-and-snow coat shone. All this, at The Place, far up in the North Jersey hinterland and all to make him presentable for the Westminster Kennel Show at New York's Madison Square Garden. After which, his two gods, the Mistress and the Master took him for a thirty-mile ride in The Place's only car, one morning.