Part 7

The old keeper used to say that Columbus “was full of odd whims and more given to mischief than malice.” When there was any hard work to be done, like lifting cage wagons out of the mud, or clearing roads of fallen trees, he was always ready to do his full share, and was never so happy as when actively engaged in some laborious occupation. Once in a while he would take it into his head that he would like a good run and an opportunity to indulge in mischief, such as uprooting trees, scattering fence rails, pulling off barn doors that happened to be standing open, etc. etc. It was his habit to signify his desire, after the “show was over,” by trumpeting nervously, dancing in his elephantine way, and tugging at his chain. These notifications did not come very often, but when they did, if not too inconvenient, his request was complied with. These calls never came just before the performance or while it was in progress. The mischief-loving old sinner was far too wise for that, for he had a most lively appreciation of the usual inflow of goodies from the boys and girls who were courageous enough to encounter the danger of “feeding the elephant.”

The last conversation I had with the successful old keeper, only a year before his death, was about his singular charge, and he insisted upon the truthfulness of his old theory—that the elephant was not naturally bad, but hated confinement, demanded kindness and consideration from those who were the visible instruments used in depriving him of his liberty, and, when he received neither, revenged himself by killing the tyrants who were depriving him of the freedom to which he was naturally entitled.

My old friend used to say: “It’s awfully hard lines for such a magnificent old beast as Columbus was to be tied up and deprived of liberty, and, if I had been in his place, I would have killed more fools of keepers than he did. Why, the old elephant was just as smart as any of us. He had thought the whole thing out for himself and put the boot on the right leg every time. He knew we’d no right to confine him the way we did, and made up his mind to be judge, jury, and executioner, and in his time he did a lot of killing. I don’t quite remember how many he made away with; some put it as high as ten, but I guess seven or eight would be about correct.

“When I was first asked to take charge of Columbus, I was in the business part of the ‘Show,’ and had never thought of becoming an elephant-driver. But somehow, without effort or knowing why, I got well acquainted with the old fellow, and, although often warned of his dangerous amusements, was never afraid of him.

“During the winter of 183- and 183- we were in quarters at C——. The confinement had been long and close, and during the whole winter Columbus had been restive and cross. When it came time to start out for the summer’s business no one could be found to drive him. So, as a last resort, the owners offered me a large salary for the job. I had no fear concerning the success of the undertaking, but hesitated about becoming a professional ‘elephant-man,’ but the big pay was a great temptation, and I yielded.

“The first few days after we started out upon the road, my charge was cross and cranky, and I had to watch him all the time as a cat would a mouse. Upon one occasion, when against my orders, just for the mere deviltry of the thing, he went out of his way to turn over a plantation cart that was standing by the roadside, I went for him savagely, with hook and spear, and gave him a big dose of something he didn’t want; he soon had enough, threw up his trunk, and yelled like a schoolboy being flogged.

“This submission proved to be his complete surrender to my will, and from that time we got on like a pair of loving brothers. We became strong friends, and I used to talk to the old rascal as I would to a human being. I have always believed he understood more than half I said to him.

“He became very fond of our morning race. It was the custom to start early in the morning—never later than four o’clock. When we would get fairly out of a village where we had exhibited the day before, I would ride up alongside and ask him if he would like a run, he would answer by throwing up his trunk, giving a trumpet sound of joy, and starting off at a stiff gait, keeping it up until I called a halt, and, if we happened to be near a stream deep enough to hold him, he would take to it, and stay until the rest of the show came up.

“No, I never had much difficulty in getting along with Columbus. From the start he found out I was not afraid of him, and that I would give it to him if he cut up any of his wicked capers; and he also came to understand that I was his indulgent friend who humored many of his harmless whims and treated him kindly.

“At the end of two years I was both glad and sorry to leave him. The watchful confinement had become irksome, and I was sure that as soon as I would leave him he would get into trouble,—which he did, and had a bad time of it to the end of his days. I have always felt kind of sorry for having put the knife through his ear, and never would have done it if I had not been excited and scart half out of my wits. If I had given my common sense half a chance, it would have told me that his lying down was a sign of recognition of authority, and that he was willing to throw up the sponge and behave himself. But I guess he forgave me, for, whenever afterwards I went near him, he would give me the old time friendly greeting.

“It’s many years now since I left the show business, and I’ve thought the whole thing over, and concluded it’s all wrong. The confinement is unnatural and cruel. Even the little animals in cages, while they seem to be happy, are as miserable as they can be. Take a careful look at them when they are not tired out or asleep, and you will find an anxious expression on all their faces—a sort of looking out of their cages for some one to come along and open the door.

“The great cat tribe, Lions, Tigers, Leopards, Panthers, and the rest of them, are always pushing their noses against the bars for liberty, and are usually pretty cross because they can’t get it.

“At any rate, it’s pleasant for me to look back upon my many years of intercourse with the poor creatures, and to feel that I never, save in the single instance, treated one of them unkindly.”

Assisting in the two years of successful management of Columbus was the inevitable “elephant dog,” who was his constant companion and friend. They slept together nights and tramped side by side during the days, and often, when the elephant would not obey his keeper, the faithful companion would, in some mysterious way, induce his huge friend to do the reasonable and behave himself like a respectable and order loving beast.

I have forgotten the manner of the taking off of the old slave of the “Show,” but he, with his friendly keeper, who to the end of his days was his champion, have long since passed on to that mysterious resting place from which neither man nor elephant have sent any message back, and let us hope that after their many trampings, and as a reward for the many miseries endured while upon earth, that they are now enjoying the rewards bestowed upon the forgiven and blest.

IN RELATION TO MYSTERIES

The relation of the three unusual incidents following these introductory words are only simple statements of facts for each reader to solve in his own way. Concerning them I have no theory whatever, and avow emphatically an entire disbelief in their sometimes alleged supernatural origin. That, for the present at least, they are inexplicable must be admitted, but that they will always remain within the realm of mysteries beyond the power of solution is very doubtful.

Up to the present time many accepted, or rather seeming, mysteries, which, with the assistance of ages, have crystallized into form, have been permitted to pass unchallenged, but the time has arrived when the old fields, now almost sacred groves, where superstition has taken root and blossomed, are about to be explored. The almost omnipotent search-light of science is turning its rays into the dark nooks and corners of complacent ignorance, greatly to the discomfiture of many old theories and beliefs, whose foundations are as unsubstantial as dreams.

Until the possibly far-off culmination of the great scientific epoch, new mysteries known only to the laboratories of Nature will continue to be born. But those who have watched the progress of scientific achievement, through the last half of the Nineteenth Century, must believe that, within the next like period, the visible manifestations of secrets coming from the bosom of Nature (of which the outer shell now only is seen) will have been ascertained to belong to a previously undiscovered series of natural phenomena.

We know as a certain fact of the existence of a natural element of power called electricity, but what is it, and whence does it come? To the ignorant it performs miracles in an apparently supernatural way, while to the intelligent it is regarded as a subtle natural force coming from the universal laboratory of boundless nature and as unending as time itself. In electricity, as in many other manifestations of the forces of nature, we see only results, and know little or nothing of the first cause. The time, however, let us hope, is not far off when origins will be as easily demonstrable as is now the seeing of effects we cannot understand.

Present indications point to the early solution of all superstitions, many of which for centuries have construed some of the simplest happenings, which could not upon any known principles be explained, into demonstrations flowing from supernatural sources. Superstition must certainly fall before the great and impartial sweep of modern research. In at least one direction, the battle will be of long duration, but at the end of the conflict, the vicious old fabric coined out of ages of falsehood as old as our civilization, sustained by centuries of superstitious ignorance and countless unspeakable cruelties and crimes, will totter from its foundation in the limitless sphere of human credulity, and fall, let us hope, to its final decay.

The destruction of that inveterate enemy of intellectual progress and the human race, will be the culminating triumph of scientific achievement and the crowning glory of human effort in the interest of a more exalted conception of the Deity, better morals, and a higher plane of civilization.

From my birth to and including a part of the year 1846, I lived with my grandparents in the town of Pomfret, Vermont. The inhabitants of that old rural community during my time were, I believe without exception, descendants from the early English colonists of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. They were an orderly, law-abiding, industrious, and honest people, intensely patriotic, believing in the fruits of the Revolution, in many of the battles of which they and their immediate ancestors had taken part.

Up to the period of my early days they were still engaged in the continuous difficult task of creating homes for their families and in building a new state, and had but little time to bestow upon books or mental culture of any sort. Their lives were laborious and beset with many hardships. Indeed, it may be truly said of them that, from an academic or bookish standpoint, they were educated and enlightened only to a limited extent. Each household had its cupboard of books brought from “below,” and they retained in their memories an interesting stock of historic traditions and patriotic anecdotes, many of which were connected with the early history of a majority of the families of this community. The frequent recital of these served to keep alive the patriotic spirit, and to impress upon the minds of the rising generation the importance and value of the heroic services performed by their ancestors.

As a rule, this little New England town unit, composed of strong, hardy unlettered men and women, was exceptionally free from natural stupidity and the usual _répertoire_ of rural superstitions, but they had a few which were dear to many of the good old New England housewives of my particular period. Among them was a belief in the misfortunes likely to attend new undertakings begun on Friday; they had a perfect reliance in the ill ending of any enterprise connected with the number thirteen; and it was rank heresy for any one not to believe in the ill-omened, grief-stricken howls of the family dog. That this latter belief was not without a certain reasonable shadow of foundation, I am about to show in the relation of a series of remarkable incidents, which are of a sort that up to this time have not been explained.

MYSTERIES

AUGUST 27, 1840

In the month of August, 1840, the twenty-seventh day, to be exact, I was still at the “old H——n Place” with my grandparents. “Just before bedtime” of the night of that day my grandmother called the attention of the household to the mournful and unusual howls of the little house dog that was sitting in the front yard with his nose pointed straight up, crying most piteously.

The incident connected with that sad sound was destined to affect me so nearly that I have never lost it, and can hear it to-day as clearly as I heard it fifty-four years ago. In about three weeks after the demonstration by the little dog, the news arrived that my father, Lorenzo Dow Hawkins, to whom I was passionately attached, had died at St. Louis, Mo., late in the afternoon of August 27th. My kind-hearted old grandmother looked down tenderly upon me, and said, “I knew something dreadful had happened. Poor child, you will never see your father again!”

In 1854 I visited St. Louis and saw Dr. Simmons, who had attended my father during his last illness, and he remembered his death having occurred in the afternoon, probably, between five and six o’clock. The difference in time between Vermont and Missouri, would make the moment of his death late in the afternoon at one place and between eight and nine at the other.

Since writing this account, a doubt has arisen in my mind in relation to the time when the two important incidents occurred. I am not quite certain that the death of my father and the howling of the dog took place at the same moment. I do remember, however, that both incidents occurred _about_ the same time, and I have a vague recollection of having heard my grandmother say, that the unusual and peculiar howl meant a death in the family. And when the news of my father’s decease arrived she expressed her belief in the certain connection between the two incidents.

AUGUST 12, 1864

In the month of August, 1864, I was visiting at the country residence of my wife’s mother, in the State of Rhode Island. Her oldest son, Alfred Nicholas Brown, was at that time staying at the New York Hotel in the City of New York. His younger sister was the owner of, and had with her at her mother’s residence, an intelligent little French poodle of a most affectionate and sensitive nature. He suffered from the effects of the summer heat and was very much annoyed by the attacks of house flies, and in order, as far as possible, to avoid both annoyances, spent the greater part of his time in a dark closet adjoining the sleeping room occupied by my wife and myself.

“Tommy” was an unusually quiet dog, seldom barking, and had never been known to howl save when certain notes of the piano were touched. About three o’clock in the morning of the 12th of August we heard a most plaintive and sorrowful howl from “Tommy” in his closet, which continued until he was stopped by being spoken to. At half past seven o’clock, the same morning, while the family were at breakfast a telegram was handed to the mother, announcing the death of her son at the New York Hotel at ten minutes past three o’clock that morning.

The fact of “Tommy’s” howl had been mentioned previously, and I am not quite certain if it was discussed, but have been informed that at least one member of the family had insisted that it was the forerunner of bad news. The bad news undoubtedly followed, but did “Tommy” obtain it in advance, and if he did, how? Or was his unusual howl an accidental coincidence?

MARCH 8, 1871

On the afternoon of March 8th, 1871, I was called to the bed-side of an old and intimate friend who resided at Newport, Rhode Island. He had spent six weeks of the winter at the Everett House in New York, the latter part of the time confined to his room, and when I saw him he was very near his end.

Our friendship was very close and of many years standing, and we had had an understanding between us to the effect that the one who survived the other should inspect, and, at his discretion, destroy, letters and other private papers left by the one deceased.

In pursuance of that understanding my friend handed me a package of keys, and requested me to take the boat that afternoon for Newport, to go to his house, to open his safe, to look over his letters and other papers, and to destroy such as I might think ought not to be preserved.

I arrived at Newport at one o’clock the next morning, and drove directly to his house. As I opened the front gate, a hundred feet or more from the front door of the house, his Irish setter dog “Charlie” came bounding down through the lawn to greet me. When he discovered I was not his master, he showed signs of great disappointment, but, when he came to realize that I was an old friend, he was better satisfied. The servants let me in, and I went to rest in the bed usually occupied by my absent friend, “Charlie” taking his usual place upon and at the foot of the bed.

In a seemingly short time,—about four o’clock, I was startled from a sound sleep by the most unearthly and weird moan I had ever heard. In a moment I discovered “Charlie” sitting up upon the bed with his nose pointed to the ceiling, in great agony of mind, pouring forth with all his strength the uncanny wails of a broken heart. I spoke to him, but did not succeed in quieting him until all the servants in the house came to the room to ascertain the cause of such an unusual disturbance.

At seven o’clock I received a message telling me my friend had passed away at ten minutes past four o’clock that morning.

During every moment of my entire stay at Newport, “Charlie” was always at my side, and could not be coaxed away from me, and, when I departed the next evening, he went with me to the wharf, and resisted our separation almost to the point of biting the servant who was to take him back to the house.

During the six weeks of his master’s absence, “Charlie” slept outside the front door, ready and hoping to greet his master whenever he might return, as was his custom, by one of the Sound steamboats.

I need not write that this unusual incident left a lasting impression upon my mind. I have never attempted to solve it and never shall, as I am quite satisfied that it was an example of natural phenomena entirely beyond my comprehension.

The chief character in this narrative, was a most quiet, dignified, and gentlemanly dog. During my six or seven years of intermittent intercourse with him, I never knew him to do an ungentlemanly act. He was a veritable Chesterfield among dogs, and his noble and gentle bearing was a model even for men. He was also the most beautiful of his race, perfect in his combination of colors, for he had many all perfectly blending into an artistic and harmonious whole. His intellectual qualities were quite in keeping with his physical beauties. His forehead was large, indicating a well rounded and well developed brain, which was deposited between a pair of the most beautiful large, soft, brown, and expressive eyes imaginable.

He had never been taught tricks of any kind, but, by the application of his natural understanding and constant reflective observation, had gradually developed a rare amount of exact intelligence in relation to many things. This rare intellectual development was largely due to his constant companionship with his master. In the field, the road, the stable, the bedroom, the dining-room, and at the table, he was usually addressed and treated like a human being. At the three daily meals he had his napkin adjusted to his neck, and sat at the right of his master, and I think it may be written of him that, although his table manners were of the dog sort, wherein the tongue played the most important part, they were unexceptional, and that he was never known to commit a breach of good table manners.

Next to his master, I was his oldest and most intimate friend. Often, when the former was away, I was left in charge as the head of the house; on such occasions “Charlie” would adopt me as a substitute for his master, but upon his master’s return he would leave me and resume his accustomed intercourse with the friend who, to him, was superior to all others. He walked with me whenever ordered to do so by his master, but not otherwise; I could not coax him even to a short promenade.

Not having been in Newport at the time, I cannot write of his conduct there while his master was ill in New York, but was informed by the servants that he was always, night and day, on the lookout for his return, and that they often experienced considerable difficulty in coaxing him into the kitchen for his meals. They arranged for him a comfortable bed near the front door, where he passed his nights, while his days were spent in anxiously watching at the lawn gate, in the vain hope of seeing the loved form of his kind master, whom he was never to behold again.

This was a rare instance (though probably not among dogs similarly situated) of affection and devotion. But then the chief actor in the pathetic little drama was ONLY A DOG.

This loving dog, however, in his simple and direct way, silently, but not the less effectually for all that, taught human beings a lesson, showing an extent of unselfish fidelity and affection which they would do well to imitate.

In closing, I may repeat what Sir John Lubbock once said, that at some future time, twenty thousand pounds would be offered as a reward to any one who would teach a dog to talk, and that then the world will be astonished to learn how insufficiently the knowledge of man’s most disinterested friend has been appreciated.

Transcriber’s Notes

--Copyright notice included from the printed edition—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.

--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.

--Only in the text versions, delimited italicized text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)