21. DOGS AND MASTERS.

1. Probably the most forlorn and abject creature to be seen on the face of the earth is a masterless dog. Slouching and slinking along, cringing to every human being it chances to meet, running away, with its tail between its legs, from smaller dogs whom under other circumstances it would accost with a gruff who-are-you sort of growl-it forms the very picture of utter humiliation and self-abasement.

2. Grip and I have just come across such a lost specimen of stray doghood, trying to find his way back to his home across the fields. I fancy he belongs to a traveling show which left the village yesterday, and it is quite refreshing to watch the air of superior wisdom and calm but mute compassionateness with which Grip casts his eye sidelong upon that wretched masterless vagrant, and passes him without even a nod.

3. He looks up to me complacently as he trots along by my side, and seems to say with his eye, "Poor fellow! he's lost his master, you know-careless dog that he is!" I believe the lesson has had a good moral effect upon Grip's own conduct, too; for he has now spent ten whole minutes well within my sight, and has resisted the most tempting solicitations to ratting and rabbiting held out by half a dozen holes and burrows in the hedge-wall, as we go along.

4. This total dependence of dogs upon a master is a very interesting example of the growth of inherited instincts. The original dog, who was a wolf, or something very like it, could not have had any such artificial feeling. He was an independent, self-reliant animal, quite well able to look after himself on the boundless plains of Central Europe or high Asia.

5. But at least as early as the days of the Danish

shell-mounds, perhaps thousands of years earlier, man had learned to tame the dog and to employ him as a friend or servant for his own purposes. Those dogs which best served the ends of man were preserved and increased; those which followed too much their own. original instincts were destroyed or at least discouraged.

6. The savage hunter would be very apt to fling his stone ax at the skull of a hound that tried to eat the game he had brought down with his flint-tipped arrow, instead of retrieving it: he would be most likely to keep carefully and feed well, on the refuse of his own meals, the hound which aided him most in surprising, killing, and securing his quarry. Thus there sprang up between man and the dog a mutual and ever-increasing sympathy which on the part of the dependent creature has at last become organized into an inherited instinct. 7. If we could only thread the labyrinth of a dog's brain, we should find somewhere in it a group of correlated nerve-connections answering to this universal habit of his race; and the group in question would be quite without any analogous mechanism in the brain of the ancestral wolf. As truly as the wing of the bird is adapted to its congenital instinct of flying; as truly as the nervous system of the bee is adapted to its congenital instinct of honeycomb building, just so truly is the brain of the dog adapted to its now congenital instinct of following and obeying a master.

8. The habit of attaching itself to a particular human being is nowadays ingrained in the nerves of the modern dog just as really, though not quite so deeply, as the habit of running or biting is ingrained in its bones and muscles. Every dog is born into the world with a certain inherited structure of limbs, sense-organs, and brain; and this inherited structure governs all its future actions, both bodily and mental. It seeks a master because it is endowed with master-seeking brain organs;

it is dissatisfied until it finds one, because its native functions can have free play in no other way.

9. Among a few dogs, like those of Constantinople, the instinct may have died out by disuse, as the eyes of cave animals are atrophied for want of light; but when a dog has been brought up from puppyhood under a master, the instinct is fully and freely developed, and the masterless condition is thenceforth for him a thwarting and disappointing of all his natural feelings and affections.

10. Not only have dogs as a class acquired a special instinct with regard to humanity generally, but particular breeds of dogs have acquired particular instincts with regard to certain individual acts. Nobody doubts that the muscles of a greyhound are specially correlated to the acts of running and leaping; or that the muscles of a bulldog are specially correlated to the act of fighting. The whole external form of these creatures has been modified by man's selective action for a deliberate purpose: we breed, as we say, from the dog with the best points.

11. But besides being able to modify the visible and outer structure of the animal, we are also able to modify, by indirect indications, the hidden and inner structure of the brain. We choose the best ratter among our terriers, the best pointer, retriever, or setter among other breeds, to become the parents of our future stock. We thus, half unconsciously, select particular types of nervous system in preference to others.

12. Now, everybody knows that you cannot teach one sort of dog the kind of tricks which come by instinct to a different sort. No amount of instruction will induce a well-bred terrier to retrieve your handkerchief: he insists upon worrying it instead. So no amount of instruction will induce a well-bred retriever to worry a rat: he brings it gingerly to your feet, as if it was a dead partridge.

13. The reason is obvious, because no one would breed from a retriever which worried, or from a terrier which treated its natural prey as if it were a stick. Thus the brain of each kind is hereditarily supplied with certain nervous connections wanting in the brain of other kinds. We need no more doubt the reality of the material distinction in the brain than we need doubt it in the limbs and jaws of the greyhound and the bulldog.

GRANT ALLEN,

22. ORIENT YOURSELF.

1. The Germans and the French have a beautiful phrase which would enrich any language that should adopt it. They say: "To orient;" or, "To orient one's self."

2. When a traveler arrives at a strange city, or is overtaken by night or by a storm, he takes out his compass and learns which way is the East, or Orient. Forthwith all the cardinal points-east, west, north, south-take their true places in his mind, and he is in no danger of seeking for the sunset or the pole-star in the wrong quarter of the heavens. He orients himself.

3. When commanders of armies approach each other for the battle, on which the fate of empires may depend, each learns the localities of the ground,-how best he can entrench his front or cover his flank; how best he can make a sally or repel an assault. He orients himself.

4. When a statesman revolves some mighty scheme of administrative policy, so vast as to comprehend surrounding nations and later times in its ample scope, he takes an inventory of his resources, he adapts means to ends, he adjusts plans and movements so that one shall not counterwork another, and he marshals the whole series of affairs for producing the grand result. Не orients himself.

5. Young man! open your heart before me for one moment, and let me write upon it these parting words. The gracious God has just called you into being; and, during the few years you have lived, the greatest lesson you have learned is, that you shall never die. All around your body the earth lies open and free, and you can go where you will; all around your spirit the universe lies open and free, and you can go where you will. Orient yourself! ORIENT YOURSELF!

6. Seek frivolous and elusive pleasures if you will; expend your immortal energies upon ignoble and fallacious joys; but know, their end is intellectual imbecility, and the perishing of every good that can ennoble or emparadise the human heart. Obey, if you will, the law of the baser passions, -appetite, pride, selfishness, -but know, they will scourge you into realms where the air is hot with fiery-tongued scorpions, that will sting and torment your soul into unutterable agonies.

7. But study and obey the sublime laws on which the frame of nature was constructed; study and obey the sublimer laws on which the soul of man was formed; and the fullness of the power and the wisdom and the blessedness, with which God has filled and lighted up this resplendent universe, shall all be yours.

5

HORACE MANN.

WRITTEN SPELLING.-WORDS OFTEN MISSPELLED.

Study this lesson by writing it on your slate.

When you write this from dictation, divide each word into syllables,

mark the accented syllable, and use diacritical marks.