then and since would have been the twentieth part of what it was--nay,
that the want of him would have been to me other than a riddance. Our
last midnight walk together (for he insisted on trying to come), January
31st, is still painful to my thought. Little dim, white speck of life,
of love, of fidelity, girdled by the darkness of night eternal."

Beecher said many a good thing about dogs, but I like this best:
Speaking of horseback riding, he incidentally remarked that in
evolution, the human door was just shut upon the horse, but the dog got
fully up before the door was shut. If there was not reason,
mirthfulness, love, honor, and fidelity in a dog, he did not know where
to look for it. Oh, if they only could speak, what wise and humorous and
sarcastic things they would say! Did you never feel snubbed by an
immense dog you had tried to patronize? And I have seen many a dog
smile. Bayard Taylor says: "I know of nothing more moving, indeed
semi-tragic, than the yearning helplessness in the face of a dog, who
understands what is said to him, and can not answer!"

Dr. Holland wrote a poem to his dog Blanco, "his dear, dumb friend," in
which he expresses what we all have felt many times.

I look into your great brown eyes,
Where love and loyal homage shine,
And wonder where the difference lies
Between your soul and mine.

The whole poem is one of the best things Holland ever did in rhyme. He
was ambitious to be remembered as a poet, but he never excelled in verse
unless he had something to express that was very near his heart. He was
emphatically the Apostle of Common Sense. How beautifully he closes his