Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

by O. Henry

　　I don't suppose it will knock any of you people off your perch toread a contribution from an animal. Mr. Kipling and a good manyothers have demonstrated the fact that animals can express themselvesin remunerative English, and no magazine goes to press nowadayswithout an animal story in it, except the old-style monthlies thatare still running pictures of Bryan and the Mont Pelee horror.But you needn't look for any stuck-up literature in my piece, such asBearoo, the bear, and Snakoo, the snake, and Tammanoo, the tiger,talk in the jungle books. A yellow dog that's spent most of his lifein a cheap New York flat, sleeping in a corner on an old sateenunderskirt (the one she spilled port wine on at the LadyLongshoremen's banquet), mustn't be expectcd to perform any trickswith the art of speech.I was born a yellow pup; date, locality, pedigree and weight unknown.The first thing I can recollect, an old woman had me in a basket atBroadway and Twenty-third trying to sell me to a fat lady. OldMother Hubbard was boosting me to beat the band as a genuinePomeranian-Hambletonian-Red-Irish-Cochin-China-Stoke-Pogis foxterrier. The fat lady chased a V around among the samples of grosgrain flannelette in her shopping bag till she cornered it, and gaveup. From that moment I was a pet--a mamma's own wootsey squidlums.Say, gentle reader, did you ever have a 200-pound woman breathing aflavour of Camembert cheese and Peau d'Espagne pick you up and wallopher nose all over you, remarking all the time in an Emma Eames toneof voice: "Oh, oo's um oodlum, doodlum, woodlum, toodlum, bitsy-witsy skoodlums?">From a pedigreed yellow pup I grew up to be an anonymous yellow curlooking like a cross between an Angora cat and a box of lemons. Butmy mistress never tumbled. She thought that the two primeval pupsthat Noah chased into the ark were but a collateral branch of myancestors. It took two policemen to keep her from entering me at theMadison Square Garden for the Siberian bloodhound prize.I'll tell you about that flat. The house was the ordinary thing inNew York, paved with Parian marble in the entrance hall andcobblestones above the first floor. Our fiat was three--well, notflights--climbs up. My mistress rented it unfurnished, and put inthe regular things--1903 antique unholstered parlour set, oil chromoof geishas in a Harlem tea house, rubber plant and husband.By Sirius! there was a biped I felt sorry for. He was a little manwith sandy hair and whiskers a good deal like mine. Henpecked?--well, toucans and flamingoes and pelicans all had their bills in him.He wiped the dishes and listened to my mistress tell about the cheap,ragged things the lady with the squirrel-skin coat on the secondfloor hung out on her line to dry. And every evening while she wasgetting supper she made him take me out on the end of a string for awalk.If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone they'd nevermarry. Laura Lean Jibbey, peanut brittle, a little almond cream onthe neck muscles, dishes unwashed, half an hour's talk with theiceman, reading a package of old letters, a couple of pickles and twobottles of malt extract, one hour peeking through a hole in thewindow shade into the flat across the air-shaft--that's about allthere is to it. Twenty minutes before time for him to come home fromwork she straightens up the house, fixes her rat so it won't show,and gets out a lot of sewing for a ten-minute bluff.I led a dog's life in that flat. 'Most all day I lay there in mycorner watching that fat woman kill time. I slept sometimes and hadpipe dreams about being out chasing cats into basements and growlingat old ladies with black mittens, as a dog was intended to do. Thenshe would pounce upon me with a lot of that drivelling poodle palaverand kiss me on the nose--but what could I do? A dog can't chewcloves.I began to feel sorry for Hubby, dog my cats if I didn't. We lookedso much alike that people noticed it when we went out; so we shookthe streets that Morgan's cab drives down, and took to climbing thepiles of last December's snow on the streets where cheap people live.One evening when we were thus promenading, and I was trying to looklike a prize St. Bernard, and the old man was trying to look like hewouldn't have murdered the first organ-grinder he heard playMendelssohn's wedding-march, I looked up at him and said, in my way:"What are you looking so sour about, you oakum trimmed lobster? Shedon't kiss you. You don't have to sit on her lap and listen to talkthat would make the book of a musical comedy sound like the maxims ofEpictetus. You ought to be thankful you're not a dog. Brace up,Benedick, and bid the blues begone."The matrimonial mishap looked down at me with almost canineintelligence in his face."Why, doggie," says he, "good doggie. You almost look like you couldspeak. What is it, doggie--Cats?"Cats! Could speak!But, of course, he couldn't understand. Humans were denied thespeech of animals. The only common ground of communication uponwhich dogs and men can get together is in fiction.In the flat across the hall from us lived a lady with a black-and-tanterrier. Her husband strung it and took it out every evening, but healways came home cheerful and whistling. One day I touched noseswith the black-and-tan in the hall, and I struck him for anelucidation."See, here, Wiggle-and-Skip," I says, "you know that it ain't thenature of a real man to play dry nurse to a dog in public. I neversaw one leashed to a bow-wow yet that didn't look like he'd like tolick every other man that looked at him. But your boss comes inevery day as perky and set up as an amateur prestidigitator doing theegg trick. How does he do it? Don't tell me he likes it.""Him?" says the black-and-tan. "Why, he uses Nature's Own Remedy.He gets spifflicated. At first when we go out he's as shy as the manon the steamer who would rather play pedro when they make 'em alljackpots. By the time we've been in eight saloons he don't carewhether the thing on the end of his line is a dog or a catfish. I'velost two inches of my tail trying to sidestep those swinging doors."The pointer I got from that terrier--vaudeville please copy--set meto thinking.One evening about 6 o'clock my mistress ordered him to get busy anddo the ozone act for Lovey. I have concealed it until now, but thatis what she called me. The black-and-tan was called "Tweetness." Iconsider that I have the bulge on him as far as you could chase arabbit. Still "Lovey" is something of a nomenclatural tin can on thetail of one's self respect.At a quiet place on a safe street I tightened the line of mycustodian in front of an attractive, refined saloon. I made a dead-ahead scramble for the doors, whining like a dog in the pressdespatches that lets the family know that little Alice is boggedwhile gathering lilies in the brook."Why, darn my eyes," says the old man, with a grin; "darn my eyes ifthe saffron-coloured son of a seltzer lemonade ain't asking me in totake a drink. Lemme see--how long's it been since I saved shoeleather by keeping one foot on the foot-rest? I believe I'll--"I knew I had him. Hot Scotches he took, sitting at a table. For anhour he kept the Campbells coming. I sat by his side rapping for thewaiter with my tail, and eating free lunch such as mamma in her flatnever equalled with her homemade truck bought at a delicatessen storeeight minutes before papa comes home.When the products of Scotland were all exhausted except the rye breadthe old man unwound me from the table leg and played me outside likea fisherman plays a salmon. Out there he took off my collar andthrew it into the street."Poor doggie," says he; "good doggie. She shan't kiss you any more.'S a darned shame. Good doggie, go away and get run over by a streetcar and be happy."I refused to leave. I leaped and frisked around the old man's legshappy as a pug on a rug."You old flea-headed woodchuck-chaser," I said to him--"you moon-baying, rabbit-pointing, eggstealing old beagle, can't you see that Idon't want to leave you? Can't you see that we're both Pups in theWood and the missis is the cruel uncle after you with the dish toweland me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail. Whynot cut that all out and be pards forever more?"Maybe you'll say he didn't understand--maybe he didn't. But he kindof got a grip on the Hot Scotches, and stood still for a minute,thinking."Doggie," says he, finally, "we don't live more than a dozen lives onthis earth, and very few of us live to be more than 300. If I eversee that flat any more I'm a flat, and if you do you're flatter; andthat's no flattery. I'm offering 60 to 1 that Westward Ho wins outby the length of a dachshund."There was no string, but I frolicked along with my master to theTwenty-third street ferry. And the cats on the route saw reason togive thanks that prehensile claws had been given them.On the Jersey side my master said to a stranger who stood eating acurrant bun:"Me and my doggie, we are bound for the Rocky Mountains."But what pleased me most was when my old man pulled both of my earsuntil I howled, and said:"You common, monkey-headed, rat-tailed, sulphur-coloured son of adoor mat, do you know what I'm going to call you?"I thought of "Lovey," and I whined dolefully."I'm going to call you 'Pete,'" says my master; and if I'd had fivetails I couldn't have done enough wagging to do justice to theoccasion.