The minister's wife told me that she had tried to feed one of those dying dogs, but that even when the food was placed in front of him he would only look pleadingly at the captain and refuse to touch it. She brought him inside, at last, where he was no longer under that deadly surveillance. He ate then, but lived only a little while. Perhaps it was too late; perhaps the decree was not to be disobeyed, even there.
As a rule, it is unwise to show kindness or the least attention to these dogs, she said. The slightest word or notice unlocks such a store-house of gratitude and heart-hunger in those poor creatures that one can never venture near that neighborhood again without being fairly overwhelmed with devotion. Speak a word to one of them and he will desert his companions and follow you for miles.
The minister's wife told how once a male member of her household had shown some mark of attention to one of the dogs of their neighborhood group. A day or two later she set out for a walk, carrying her parasol, holding it downward. Suddenly she felt it taken from her hand. Looking down, she saw a dog walking by her side, carrying it. It was the favored animal, trying to make return to any one who came out of that heavenly house.
She told me how in the winter the dogs pile up in pyramids to keep warm, and how those underneath, when they have smothered as long as they can, will work out and get to the top of the heap and let the others have a chance to get warm and smothered too.
Once, when some excavations were going on in her neighborhood the dogs of several bands, made kin by a vigorous touch of nature, cold, had packed themselves into a sort of tunnel which the workmen had made. One dog who had come a little late was left outside. He made one or two efforts to get a position, but it was no use. He reflected upon the situation and presently set up a loud barking. That was too much for those other dogs. They came tumbling out to see what had happened, but before they had a chance to find out, the late arrival had slipped quietly in and established himself in the warmest place.
Once a pasha visited a certain neighborhood in Pera, and the dogs kept him awake. In his irritation he issued an order that the dogs of that environment should be killed. The order was carried out, and for a day and a night there was silence there. But then the word had gone forth that a section of rich territory had been vacated, and there was a rush for it that was like the occupation of the Oklahoma strip.