The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne
page 41 of 319 (12%)
page 41 of 319 (12%)
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dumb alphabet in a way that defies description. He conversed, so to
speak, with his extremities--his head and his tail. But his eyes, his soft brown eyes, were the chief medium of communication. If ever the language of the eyes was carried to perfection, it was exhibited in the person of Crusoe. But, indeed, it would be difficult to say which part of his expressive face expressed most--the cocked ears of expectation, the drooped ears of sorrow; the bright, full eye of joy, the half-closed eye of contentment, and the frowning eye of indignation accompanied with a slight, a very slight pucker of the nose and a gleam of dazzling ivory--ha! no enemy ever saw this last piece of canine language without a full appreciation of what it meant. Then as to the tail--the modulations of meaning in the varied wag of that expressive member--oh! it's useless to attempt description. Mortal man cannot conceive of the delicate shades of sentiment expressible by a dog's tail, unless he has studied the subject--the wag, the waggle, the cock, the droop, the slope, the wriggle! Away with description--it is impotent and valueless here! As we have said, Crusoe was meek and mild. He had been bitten, on the sly, by half the ill-natured curs in the settlement, and had only shown his teeth in return. He had no enmities--though several enemies--and he had a thousand friends, particularly among the ranks of the weak and the persecuted, whom he always protected and avenged when opportunity offered. A single instance of this kind will serve to show his character. One day Dick and Crusoe were sitting on a rock beside the lake--the same identical rock near which, when a pup, the latter had received his first lesson. They were conversing as usual, for Dick had elicited such a fund of intelligence from the dog's mind, and had injected such |
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