Beautiful Joe - by Marshall Saunders
BEAUTIFUL JOE
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
BY MARSHALL SAUNDERS
Author of
"My Spanish Sailor,"
"Charles and His Lamb,"
"Daisy," etc.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH
OF YOUTH'S COMPANION
1903
TO
GEORGE THORNDIKE ANGELL
PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN HUMANE EDUCATION SOCIETY
THE MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION
OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS, AND THE PARENT
AMERICAN BAND OF MERCY
19 MILK ST., BOSTON
THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
BY THE AUTHOR
PREFACE
Beautiful Joe is a real dog, and "Beautiful Joe" is his real name. He
belonged during the first part of his life to a cruel master, who
mutilated him in the manner described in the story. He was rescued from
him, and is now living in a happy home with pleasant surroundings, and
enjoys a wide local celebrity.
The character of Laura is drawn from life, and to the smallest detail is
truthfully depicted. The Morris family has its counterparts in real
life, and nearly all of the incidents of the story are founded on
fact.--THE AUTHOR.
INTRODUCTION
The wonderfully successful book, entitled "Black Beauty," came like a
living voice out of the animal kingdom. But it spake for the horse, and
made other books necessary; it led the way. After the ready welcome that
it received, and the good it has accomplished and is doing, it followed
naturally that some one should be inspired to write a book to interpret
the life of a dog to the humane feeling of the world. Such a story we
have in "Beautiful Joe."
The story speaks not for the dog alone, but for the whole animal
kingdom. Through it we enter the animal world, and are made to see as
animals see, and to feel as animals feel. The sympathetic sight of the
author, in this interpretation, is ethically the strong feature of the
book.
Such books as this is one of the needs of our progressive system of
education. The day-school, the Sunday-school, and all libraries for the
young, demand the influence that shall teach the reader how to live in
sympathy with the animal world; how to understand the languages of the
creatures that we have long been accustomed to call "dumb," and the sign
language of the lower orders of these dependent beings. The church owes
it to her mission to preach and to teach the enforcement of the "bird's
nest commandment;" the principle recognized by Moses in the Hebrew
world, and echoed by Cowper in English poetry, and Burns in the "Meadow
Mouse," and by our own Longfellow in songs of many keys.
Kindness to the animal kingdom is the first, or a first principle in the
growth of true philanthropy. Young Lincoln once waded across a
half-frozen river to rescue a dog, and stopped in a walk with a
statesman to put back a bird that had fallen out of its nest. Such a
heart was trained to be a leader of men, and to be crucified for a
cause. The conscience that runs to the call of an animal in distress is
girding itself with power to do manly work in the world.
The story of "Beautiful Joe" awakens an intense interest, and sustains
it through a series of vivid incidents and episodes, each of which is a
lesson. The story merits the widest circulation, and the universal
reading and response accorded to "Black Beauty." To circulate it is to
do good; to help the human heart as well as the creatures of quick
feelings and simple language.
When, as one of the committee to examine the manuscripts offered for
prizes to the Humane Society, I read the story, I felt that the writer
had a higher motive than to compete for a prize; that the story was a
stream of sympathy that flowed from the heart; that it was genuine; that
it only needed a publisher who should be able to command a wide
influence, to make its merits known, to give it a strong educational
mission.
I am pleased that the manuscript has found such a publisher, and am sure
that the issue of the story will honor the Publication Society. In the
development of the book, I believe that the humane cause has stood above
any speculative thought or interest. The book comes because it is called
for; the times demand it. I think that the publishers have a right to
ask for a little unselfish service on the part of the public in helping
to give it a circulation commensurate with its opportunity, need, and
influence.
HEZEKIAH BUTTERWORTH.
(Of the committee of readers of the prize stories offered to the Humane
Society.)
BOSTON, MASS., Dec., 1893.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. ONLY A CUR
II. THE CRUEL MILKMAN
III. MY KIND DELIVERER AND MISS LAURA
IV. THE MORRIS BOYS ADD TO MY NAME
V. MY NEW HOME AND A SELFISH LADY
VI. THE FOX TERRIER BILLY
VII. TRAINING A PUPPY
VIII. A RUINED DOG
IX. THE PARROT BELLA
X. BILLY'S TRAINING CONTINUED
XI. GOLDFISH AND CANARIES
XII. MALTA THE CAT
XIII. THE BEGINNING OF AN ADVENTURE
XIV. HOW WE CAUGHT THE BURGLAR
XV. OUR JOURNEY TO RIVERDALE
XVI. DINGLEY FARM
XVII. MR. WOOD AND HIS HORSES
XVIII. MRS. WOOD'S POULTRY
XIX. A BAND OF MERCY
XX. STORIES ABOUT ANIMALS
XXI. MR. MAXWELL AND MR. HARRY
XXII. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE TEA TABLE
XXIII. TRAPPING WILD ANIMALS
XXIV. THE RABBIT AND THE HEN
XXV. A HAPPY HORSE
XXVI. THE BOX OF MONEY
XXVII. A NEGLECTED STABLE
XXVIII. THE END OF THE ENGLISHMAN
XXIX. A TALK ABOUT SHEEP
XXX. A JEALOUS OX
XXXI. IN THE COW STABLE
XXXII. OUR RETURN HOME
XXXIII. PERFORMING ANIMALS
XXXIV. A FIRE IN FAIRPORT
XXXV. BILLY AND THE ITALIAN
XXXVI. DANDY THE TRAMP
XXXVII. THE END OF MY STORY
BEAUTIFUL JOE
CHAPTER I
ONLY A CUR
My name is Beautiful Joe, and I am a brown dog of medium size. I am not
called Beautiful Joe because I am a beauty. Mr. Morris, the clergyman,
in whose family I have lived for the last twelve years, says that he
thinks I must be called Beautiful Joe for the same reason that his
grandfather, down South, called a very ugly colored slave-lad Cupid, and
his mother Venus.
I do not know what he means by that, but when he says it people always
look at me and smile. I know that I am not beautiful, and I know that I
am not a thoroughbred. I am only a cur.
When my mistress went every year to register me and pay my tax, and the
man in the office asked what breed I was, she said part fox-terrier and
part bull-terrier; but he always put me down a cur. I don't think she
liked having him call me a cur; still, I have heard her say that she
preferred curs, for they have more character than well-bred dogs. Her
father said that she liked ugly dogs for the same reason that a nobleman
at the court of a certain king did--namely, that no one else would.
I am an old dog now, and am writing, or rather getting a friend to
write, the story of my life. I have seen my mistress laughing and crying
over a little book that she says is a story of a horse's life, and
sometimes she puts the book down close to my nose to let me see the
pictures.
I love my dear mistress; I can say no more than that; I love her better
than any one else in the world; and I think it will please her if I
write the story of a dog's life. She loves dumb animals, and it always
grieves her to see them treated cruelly.
I have heard her say that if all the boys and girls in the world were to
rise up and say that there should be no more cruelty to animals, they
could put a stop to it. Perhaps it will help a little if I tell a story.
I am fond of boys and girls, and though I have seen many cruel men and
women, I have seen few cruel children. I think the more stories there
are written about dumb animals, the better it will be for us.
In telling my story, I think I had better begin at the first and come
right on to the end. I was born in a stable on the outskirts of a small
town in Maine called Fairport. The first thing I remember was lying
close to my mother and being very snug and warm. The next thing I
remember was being always hungry. I had a number of brothers and
sisters--six in all--and my mother never had enough milk for us. She was
always half starved herself, so she could not feed us properly.
I am very unwilling to say much about my early life, I have lived so
long in a family where there is never a harsh word spoken, and where no
one thinks of ill-treating anybody or anything, that it seems almost
wrong even to think or speak of such a matter as hurting a poor dumb
beast.
The man that owned my mother was a milkman. He kept one horse and three
cows, and he had a shaky old cart that he used to put his milk cans in.
I don't think there can be a worse man in the world than that milkman.
It makes me shudder now to think of him. His name was Jenkins, and I am
glad to think that he is getting punished now for his cruelty to poor
dumb animals and to human beings. If you think it is wrong that I am
glad, you must remember that I am only a dog.
The first notice that he took of me when I was a little puppy, just able
to stagger about, was to give me a kick that sent me into a corner of
the stable. He used to beat and starve my mother. I have seen him use
his heavy whip to punish her till her body was covered with blood. When
I got older I asked her why she did not run away. She said she did not
wish to; but I soon found out that the reason she did not run away, was
because she loved Jenkins. Cruel and savage as he was, she yet loved
him, and I believe she would have laid down her life for him.
Now that I am old, I know that there are more men in the world like
Jenkins. They are not crazy, they are not drunkards; they simply seem to
be possessed with a spirit of wickedness. There are well-to-do people,
yes, and rich people, who will treat animals, and even little children,
with such terrible cruelty, that one cannot even mention the things that
they are guilty of.
One reason for Jenkins' cruelty was his idleness. After he went his
rounds in the morning with his milk cans, he had nothing to do till late
in the afternoon but take care of his stable and yard. If he had kept
them neat, and groomed his horse, and cleaned the cows, and dug up the
garden, it would have taken up all his time; but he never tidied the
place at all, till his yard and stable got so littered up with things he
threw down that he could not make his way about.
His house and stable stood in the middle of a large field, and they were
at some distance from the road. Passers-by could not see how untidy the
place was. Occasionally, a man came to look at the premises, and see
that they were in good order, but Jenkins always knew when to expect
him, and had things cleaned up a little.
I used to wish that some of the people that took milk from him would
come and look at his cows. In the spring and summer he drove them out to
pasture, but during the winter they stood all the time in the dirty,
dark stable, where the chinks in the wall were so big that the snow
swept through almost in drifts. The ground was always muddy and wet;
there was only one small window on the north side, where the sun only
shone in for a short time in the afternoon.
They were very unhappy cows, but they stood patiently and never
complained, though sometimes I know they must have nearly frozen in the
bitter winds that blew through the stable on winter nights. They were
lean and poor, and were never in good health. Besides being cold they
were fed on very poor food.
Jenkins used to come home nearly every afternoon with a great tub in the
back of his cart that was full of what he called "peelings." It was
kitchen stuff that he asked the cooks at the different houses where he
delivered milk, to save for him. They threw rotten vegetables, fruit
parings, and scraps from the table into a tub, and gave them to him at
the end of a few days. A sour, nasty mess it always was, and not fit to
give any creature.
Sometimes, when he had not many "peelings," he would go to town and get
a load of decayed vegetables, that grocers were glad to have him take
off their hands.
This food, together with poor hay, made the cows give very poor milk,
and Jenkins used to put some white powder in it, to give it "body," as
he said.
Once a very sad thing happened about the milk, that no one knew about
but Jenkins and his wife. She was a poor, unhappy creature, very
frightened at her husband, and not daring to speak much to him. She was
not a clean woman, and I never saw a worse-looking house than she kept.
She used to do very queer things, that I know now no housekeeper should
do. I have seen her catch up the broom to pound potatoes in the pot. She
pounded with the handle, and the broom would fly up and down in the air,
dropping dust into the pot where the potatoes were. Her pan of
soft-mixed bread she often left uncovered in the kitchen, and sometimes
the hens walked in and sat in it.
The children used to play in mud puddles about the door. It was the
youngest of them that sickened with some kind of fever early in the
spring, before Jenkins began driving the cows out to pasture. The child
was very ill, and Mrs. Jenkins wanted to send for a doctor, but her
husband would not let her. They made a bed in the kitchen, close to the
stove, and Mrs. Jenkins nursed the child as best she could. She did all
her work near by, and I saw her several times wiping the child's face
with the cloth that she used for washing her milk pans.
Nobody knew outside the family that the little girl was ill. Jenkins had
such a bad name, that none of the neighbors would visit them. By-and-by
the child got well, and a week or two later Jenkins came home with quite
a frightened face, and told his wife that the husband of one of his
customers was very ill with typhoid fever.
After a time the gentleman died, and the cook told Jenkins that the
doctor wondered how he could have taken the fever, for there was not a
case in town.
There was a widow left with three orphans, and they never knew that they
had to blame a dirty, careless milkman for taking a kind husband and
father from them.
* * * * *
CHAPTER II
THE CRUEL MILKMAN
I have said that Jenkins spent most of his days in idleness. He had to
start out very early in the morning, in order to supply his customers
with milk for breakfast. Oh, how ugly he used to be, when he came into
the stable on cold winter mornings, before the sun was up.
He would hang his lantern on a hook, and get his milking stool, and if
the cows did not step aside just to suit him, he would seize a broom or
fork, and beat them cruelly.
My mother and I slept on a heap of straw in the corner of the stable,
and when she heard his step in the morning she always roused me, so that
we could run out-doors as soon as he opened the stable door. He always
aimed a kick at us as we passed, but my mother taught me how to dodge
him.
After he finished milking, he took the pails of milk up to the house for
Mrs. Jenkins to strain and put in the cans, and he came back and
harnessed his horse to the cart. His horse was called Toby, and a poor,
miserable, broken-down creature he was. He was weak in the knees, and
weak in the back, and weak all over, and Jenkins had to beat him all the
time, to make him go. He had been a cab horse, and his mouth had been
jerked, and twisted, and sawed at, till one would think there could be
no feeling left in it; still I have seen him wince and curl up his lip
when Jenkins thrust in the frosty bit on a winter's morning.
Poor old Toby! I used to lie on my straw sometimes and wonder he did not
cry out with pain. Cold and half starved he always was in the winter
time, and often with raw sores on his body that Jenkins would try to
hide by putting bits of cloth under the harness. But Toby never
murmured, and he never tried to kick and bite, and he minded the least
word from Jenkins, and if he swore at him. Toby would start back, or
step up quickly, he was so anxious to please him.
After Jenkins put him in the cart, and took in the cans, he set out on
his rounds. My mother, whose name was Jess, always went with him. I used
to ask her why she followed such a brute of a man, and she would hang
her head, and say that sometimes she got a bone from the different
houses they stopped at. But that was not the whole reason. She liked
Jenkins so much, that she wanted to be with him.
I had not her sweet and patient disposition, and I would not go with
her. I watched her out of sight, and then ran up to the house to see if
Mrs. Jenkins had any scraps for me. I nearly always got something, for
she pitied me, and often gave me a kind word or look with the bits of
food that she threw to me.
When Jenkins come home, I often coaxed mother to run about and see some
of the neighbors' dogs with me. But she never would, and I would not
leave her. So, from morning to night we had to sneak about, keeping out
of Jenkins' way as much as we could, and yet trying to keep him in
sight. He always sauntered about with a pipe in his mouth, and his hands
in his pockets, growling first at his wife and children, and then at his
dumb creatures.
I have not told what became of my brothers and sisters. One rainy day,
when we were eight weeks old, Jenkins, followed by two or three of his
ragged, dirty children, came into the stable and looked at us. Then he
began to swear because we were so ugly, and said if we had been
good-looking, he might have sold some of us. Mother watched him
anxiously, and fearing some danger to her puppies, ran and jumped in the
middle of us, and looked pleadingly up at him.
It only made him swear the more. He took one pup after another, and
right there, before his children and my poor distracted mother, put an
end to their lives. Some of them he seized by the legs and knocked
against the stalls, till their brains were dashed out, others he killed
with a fork. It was very terrible. My mother ran up and down the stable,
screaming with pain, and I lay weak and trembling, and expecting every
instant that my turn would come next. I don't know why he spared me. I
was the only one left.
His children cried, and he sent them out of the stable and went out
himself. Mother picked up all the puppies and brought them to our nest
in the straw and licked them, and tried to bring them back to life; but
it was of no use; they were quite dead. We had them in our corner of the
stable for some days, till Jenkins discovered them, and swearing
horribly at us, he took his stable fork and threw them out in the yard,
and put some earth over them.
My mother never seemed the same after this. She was weak and miserable,
and though she was only four years old, she seemed like an old dog. This
was on account of the poor food she had been fed on. She could not run
after Jenkins, and she lay on our heap of straw, only turning over with
her nose the scraps of food I brought her to eat. One day she licked me
gently, wagged her tail, and died.
As I sat by her, feeling lonely and miserable, Jenkins came into the
stable. I could not bear to look at him. He had killed my mother. There
she lay, a little, gaunt, scarred creature, starved and worried to death
by him. Her mouth was half open, her eyes were staring. She would never
again look kindly at me, or curl up to me at night to keep me warm. Oh,
how I hated her murderer! But I sat quietly, even when he went up and
turned her over with his foot to see if she was really dead. I think he
was a little sorry, for he turned scornfully toward me and said, "She
was worth two of you; why didn't you go instead?"
Still I kept quiet till he walked up to me and kicked at me. My heart
was nearly broken, and I could stand no more. I flew at him and gave him
a savage bite on the ankle.
"Oho," he said, "so you are going to be a fighter, are you? I'll fix you
for that." His face was red and furious. He seized me by the back of the
neck and carried me out to the yard where a log lay on the ground.
"Bill," he called to one of his children, "bring me the hatchet."
He laid my head on the log and pressed one hand on my struggling body. I
was now a year old and a full-sized dog. There was a quick, dreadful
pain, and he had cut off my ear, not in the way they cut puppies' ears,
but close to my head, so close that he cut off some of the skin beyond
it. Then he cut off the other ear, and, turning me swiftly round, cut
off my tail close to my body.
Then he let me go and stood looking at me as I rolled on the ground and
yelped in agony. He was in such a passion that he did not think that
people passing by on the road might hear me.
* * * * *
CHAPTER III
MY KIND DELIVERER AND MISS LAURA
There was a young man going by on a bicycle. He heard my screams and
springing off his bicycle, came hurrying up the path, and stood among us
before Jenkins caught sight of him.
In the midst of my pain, I heard him in say fiercely "What have you been
doing to that dog?"
"I've been cuttin' his ears for fightin', my young gentleman," said
Jenkins. "There is no law to prevent that, is there?"
"And there is no law to prevent my giving you a beating," said the young
man, angrily. In a trice he had seized Jenkins by the throat, and was
pounding him with all his might. Mrs. Jenkins came and stood at the
house door, crying, but making no effort to help her husband.
"Bring me a towel," the young man cried to her, after he had stretched
Jenkins, bruised and frightened, on the ground. She snatched off her
apron, and ran down with it, and the young man wrapped me in it, and
taking me carefully in his arms, walked down the path to the gate. There
were some little boys standing there, watching him, their mouths wide
open with astonishment. "Sonny," he said to the largest of them, "if you
will come behind and carry this dog, I will give you a quarter."
The boy took me, and we set out. I was all smothered up in a cloth, and
moaning with pain, but still I looked out occasionally to see which way
we were going. We took the road to the town and stopped in front of a
house on Washington Street. The young man leaned his bicycle up against
the house, took a quarter from his pocket and put it in the boy's hand,
and lifting me gently in his arms, went up a lane leading to the back of
the house.
There was a small stable there. He went into it, put me down on the
floor and uncovered my body. Some boys were playing about the stable,
and I heard them say, in horrified tones, "Oh, Cousin Harry, what is the
matter with that dog?"
"Hush," he said. "Don't make a fuss. You, Jack, go down to the kitchen
and ask Mary for a basin of warm water and a sponge, and don't let your
mother or Laura hear you."
A few minutes later, the young man had bathed my bleeding ears and tail,
and had rubbed something on them that was cool and pleasant, and had
bandaged them firmly with strips of cotton. I felt much better and was
able to look about me,
I was in a small stable, that was evidently not used for a stable, but
more for a play-room. There were various kinds of toys scattered about
and a swing and bar, such as boys love to twist about on, in two
different corners. In a box against the wall was a guinea pig, looking
at me in an interested way. This guinea pig's name was Jeff, and he and
I became good friends. A long-haired French rabbit was hopping about,
and a tame white rat was perched on the shoulder of one of the boys, and
kept his foothold there, no matter how suddenly the boy moved. There
were so many boys, and the stable was so small, that I suppose he was
afraid he would get stepped on if he went on the floor. He stared hard
at me with his little, red eyes, and never even glanced at a
queer-looking, gray cat that was watching me, too, from her bed in the
back of the vacant horse stall. Out in the sunny yard, some pigeons were
pecking at grain, and a spaniel lay asleep in a corner.
I had never seen anything like this before, and my wonder at it almost
drove the pain away. Mother and I always chased rats and birds, and once
we killed a kitten. While I was puzzling over it, one of the boys cried
out, "Here is Laura!"
"Take that rag out of the way," said Mr. Harry, kicking aside the old
apron I had been wrapped in, and that was stained with my blood. One of
the boys stuffed it into a barrel, and then they all looked toward the
house.
A young girl, holding up one hand to shade her eyes from the sun, was
coming up the walk that led from the house to the stable. I thought then
that I never had seen such a beautiful girl, and I think so still. She
was tall and slender, and had lovely brown eyes and brown hair, and a
sweet smile, and just to look at her was enough to make one love her. I
stood in the stable door, staring at her with all my might.
"Why, what a funny dog," she said, and stopped short to looked at me. Up
to this, I had not thought what a queer-looking sight I must be. Now I
twisted round my head, saw the white bandage on my tail, and knowing I
was not a fit spectacle for a pretty young lady like that, I slunk into
a corner.