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Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







I don't suppose it will knock any of you people off your perch to
read a contribution from an animal. Mr. Kipling and a good many
others have demonstrated the fact that animals can express themselves
in remunerative English, and no magazine goes to press nowadays
without an animal story in it, except the old-style monthlies that
are still running pictures of Bryan and the Mont Pelee horror.

But you needn't look for any stuck-up literature in my piece, such as
Bearoo, the bear, and Snakoo, the snake, and Tammanoo, the tiger,
talk in the jungle books. A yellow dog that's spent most of his life
in a cheap New York flat, sleeping in a corner on an old sateen
underskirt (the one she spilled port wine on at the Lady
Longshoremen's banquet), mustn't be expcctcd to perform any tricks
with the art of speech.

I was born a yellow pup; date, locality, pedigree and weight unknown.
The first thing I can recollect, an old woman had me in a basket at
Broadway and Twenty-third trying to sell me to a fat lady. Old
Mother Hubbard was boosting me to beat the band as a genuine
Pomeranian-Hambletonian-Red-Irish-Cochin-China-Stoke-Pogis fox
terrier. The fat lady chased a V around among the samples of gros
grain flannelette in her shopping bag till she cornered it, and gave
up. From that moment I was a pet--a mamma's own wootsey squidlums.
Say, gentle reader, did you ever have a 200-pound woman breathing a
flavour of Camembert cheese and Peau d'Espagne pick you up and wallop
her nose all over you, remarking all the time in an Emma Eames tone
of voice: "Oh, oo's um oodlum, doodlum, woodlum, toodlum, bitsy-
witsy skoodlums?"

>From a pedigreed yellow pup I grew up to be an anonymous yellow cur
looking like a cross between an Angora cat and a box of lemons. But
my mistress never tumbled. She thought that the two primeval pups
that Noah chased into the ark were but a collateral branch of my
ancestors. It took two policemen to keep her from entering me at the
Madison Square Garden for the Siberian bloodhound prize.

I'll tell you about that flat. The house was the ordinary thing in
New York, paved with Parian marble in the entrance hall and
cobblestones above the first floor. Our fiat was three--well, not
flights--climbs up. My mistress rented it unfurnished, and put in
the regular things--1903 antique unholstered parlour set, oil chromo
of geishas in a Harlem tea house, rubber plant and husband.

By Sirius! there was a biped I felt sorry for. He was a little man
with sandy hair and whiskers a good deal like mine. Henpecked?--
well, toucans and flamingoes and pelicans all had their bills in him.
He wiped the dishes and listened to my mistress tell about the cheap,
ragged things the lady with the squirrel-skin coat on the second
floor hung out on her line to dry. And every evening while she was
getting supper she made him take me out on the end of a string for a
walk.

If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone they'd never
marry. Laura Lean Jibbey, peanut brittle, a little almond cream on
the neck muscles, dishes unwashed, half an hour's talk with the
iceman, reading a package of old letters, a couple of pickles and two
bottles of malt extract, one hour peeking through a hole in the
window shade into the flat across the air-shaft--that's about all
there is to it. Twenty minutes before time for him to come home from
work she straightens up the house, fixes her rat so it won't show,
and gets out a lot of sewing for a ten-minute bluff.

I led a dog's life in that flat. 'Most all day I lay there in my
corner watching that fat woman kill time. I slept sometimes and had
pipe dreams about being out chasing cats into basements and growling
at old ladies with black mittens, as a dog was intended to do. Then
she would pounce upon me with a lot of that drivelling poodle palaver
and kiss me on the nose--but what could I do? A dog can't chew
cloves.

I began to feel sorry for Hubby, dog my cats if I didn't. We looked
so much alike that people noticed it when we went out; so we shook
the streets that Morgan's cab drives down, and took to climbing the
piles of last December's snow on the streets where cheap people live.

One evening when we were thus promenading, and I was trying to look
like a prize St. Bernard, and the old man was trying to look like he
wouldn't have murdered the first organ-grinder he heard play
Mendelssohn's wedding-march, I looked up at him and said, in my way:

"What are you looking so sour about, you oakum trimmed lobster? She
don't kiss you. You don't have to sit on her lap and listen to talk
that would make the book of a musical comedy sound like the maxims of
Epictetus. You ought to be thankful you're not a dog. Brace up,
Benedick, and bid the blues begone."

The matrimonial mishap looked down at me with almost canine
intelligence in his face.

"Why, doggie," says he, "good doggie. You almost look like you could
speak. What is it, doggie--Cats?"

Cats! Could speak!

But, of course, he couldn't understand. Humans were denied the
speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon
which dogs and men can get together is in fiction.

In the flat across the hall from us lived a lady with a black-and-tan
terrier. Her husband strung it and took it out every evening, but he
always came home cheerful and whistling. One day I touched noses
with the black-and-tan in the hall, and I struck him for an
elucidation.

"See, here, Wiggle-and-Skip," I says, "you know that it ain't the
nature of a real man to play dry nurse to a dog in public. I never
saw one leashed to a bow-wow yet that didn't look like he'd like to
lick every other man that looked at him. But your boss comes in
every day as perky and set up as an amateur prestidigitator doing the
egg trick. How does he do it? Don't tell me he likes it."

"Him?" says the black-and-tan. "Why, he uses Nature's Own Remedy.
He gets spifflicated. At first when we go out he's as shy as the man
on the steamer who would rather play pedro when they make 'em all
jackpots. By the time we've been in eight saloons he don't care
whether the thing on the end of his line is a dog or a catfish. I've
lost two inches of my tail trying to sidestep those swinging doors."

The pointer I got from that terrier--vaudeville please copy--set me
to thinking.

One evening about 6 o'clock my mistress ordered him to get busy and
do the ozone act for Lovey. I have concealed it until now, but that
is what she called me. The black-and-tan was called "Tweetness." I
consider that I have the bulge on him as far as you could chase a
rabbit. Still "Lovey" is something of a nomenclatural tin can on the
tail of one's self respect.

At a quiet place on a safe street I tightened the line of my
custodian in front of an attractive, refined saloon. I made a dead-
ahead scramble for the doors, whining like a dog in the press
despatches that lets the family know that little Alice is bogged
while gathering lilies in the brook.

"Why, darn my eyes," says the old man, with a grin; "darn my eyes if
the saffron-coloured son of a seltzer lemonade ain't asking me in to
take a drink. Lemme see--how long's it been since I saved shoe
leather by keeping one foot on the foot-rest? I believe I'll--"

I knew I had him. Hot Scotches he took, sitting at a table. For an
hour he kept the Campbells coming. I sat by his side rapping for the
waiter with my tail, and eating free lunch such as mamma in her flat
never equalled with her homemade truck bought at a delicatessen store
eight minutes before papa comes home.

When the products of Scotland were all exhausted except the rye bread
the old man unwound me from the table leg and played me outside like
a fisherman plays a salmon. Out there he took off my collar and
threw it into the street.

"Poor doggie," says he; "good doggie. She shan't kiss you any more.
'S a darned shame. Good doggie, go away and get run over by a street
car and be happy."

I refused to leave. I leaped and frisked around the old man's legs
happy as a pug on a rug.

"You old flea-headed woodchuck-chaser," I said to him--"you moon-
baying, rabbit-pointing, eggstealing old beagle, can't you see that I
don't want to leave you? Can't you see that we're both Pups in the
Wood and the missis is the cruel uncle after you with the dish towel
and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail. Why
not cut that all out and be pards forever more?"

Maybe you'll say he didn't understand--maybe he didn't. But he kind
of got a grip on the Hot Scotches, and stood still for a minute,
thinking.

"Doggie," says he, finally, "we don't live more than a dozen lives on
this earth, and very few of us live to be more than 300. If I ever
see that flat any more I'm a flat, and if you do you're flatter; and
that's no flattery. I'm offering 60 to 1 that Westward Ho wins out
by the length of a dachshund."

There was no string, but I frolicked along with my master to the
Twenty-third street ferry. And the cats on the route saw reason to
give thanks that prehensile claws had been given them.

On the Jersey side my master said to a stranger who stood eating a
currant bun:

"Me and my doggie, we are bound for the Rocky Mountains."

But what pleased me most was when my old man pulled both of my ears
until I howled, and said:

"You common, monkey-headed, rat-tailed, sulphur-coloured son of a
door mat, do you know what I'm going to call you?"

I thought of "Lovey," and I whined dolefully.

"I'm going to call you 'Pete,'" says my master; and if I'd had five
tails I couldn't have done enough wagging to do justice to the
occasion.




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