Explore "The Evolutionist at Large" by Grant Allen on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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-the-dickens-are-you sort of growl, -- it forms the very picture of utter humiliation and self-abasement. 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 travelling 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 by without even a nod. 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.