"Sheep and men are very much alike," said Trust, who thought both very poor creatures. "Very much alike indeed. They go in flocks, and can't give a reason why. They leave their fleece on any bramble that is strong enough to insist on fleecing them. They bleat loud at imagined evils, while they tumble straight into real dangers. And for going off the line, there's nothing like them. There may be pits, thorns, quagmires, spring-guns, what not, the other side of the hedge, but go off the straight track they will--and no dog can stop them. It's just the sheer love of straying. You may bark at them right and left; go they will, though they break their legs down a limekiln. Oh, men and sheep are wonderfully similar; take them all in all."
Ah! you people never guess the infinite woe we dogs suffer in new homes, under strange tyrannies; you never heed how we shrink from unfamiliar hands, and shudder at unfamiliar voices, how lonely we feel in unknown places, how acutely we dread harshness, novelty, and scornful treatment. Dogs die oftentimes of severance from their masters; there is Greyfriars' Bobby now in Edinboro' town who never has been persuaded to leave his dead owner's grave all these many years through. You see such things, but you are indifferent to them. "It is only a dog," you say; "what matter if the brute fret to death?"
You don't understand it of course; you who so soon forget all your own dead--the mother that bore you, the mistress that loved you, the friend that fought with you shoulder to shoulder; and of course, also, you care nothing for the measureless blind pains, the mute helpless sorrows, the vague lonely terrors, that ache in our little dumb hearts.
Lucretius has said how charming it is to stand under a shelter in a storm, and see another hurrying through its rain and wind; but a woman would refine that sort of cruelty, and would not be quite content unless she had an umbrella beside her that she refused to lend.
"Oh, pooh, my dear!" cried Fanfreluche. "He has robbed his host at cards, and abused his host behind his back; to fulfil the whole duty of a nineteenth century guest it only remains for him to betray his host in love!"
"You think very ill of men?" I muttered; I was, indeed, slightly weary of her sceptical supercilious treatment of all things; your pseudo-philosopher, who will always think he has plumbed the ocean with his silver-topped cane, is a great bore sometimes.