Quotes from Albert Payson Terhune

It was really his fault—and he realized it now—that the man had made such a racket. Would the Master punish him? Perhaps. Humans have such odd ideas of Justice. He—

You don't mean what you say. You may think you do, but you don't. What has been right and natural, since the days of Eve, will keep on being right and natural to the end of the chapter. What has gone on for six thousand years is not likely to stop short and change itself, in a single quarter century. Nothing in nature has ever done that.

Again and again he used to do this. Lad seemed to enjoy it, for he would stand at grave attention, as though listening to something the coon was confiding to him. "I'm sure he's telling Laddie a secret when he does that," said the Mistress. "Nonsense!" scoffed the Master. "We're not living in fable-land. More likely the pesky coon is hunting Lad's ear for fleas. Likelier still, it's just a senseless game they've invented.

hamlet of Hampton and there get as nearly drunk as his funds would permit. It was his only surcease. And as a rule, it was a poor one. For seldom did he have enough ready money to buy wholesale forgetfulness. More often he was able to purchase only enough hard cider or fuseloil whisky to make him dull and vaguely miserable.

At first I was for taking him back to you, myself. But my wife doesn't want me to. So, as usual, we've compromised by doing what she wants. She wants him to stay right here. Next time, his crazy luck might land him in dog heaven instead of here at Sunnybank. She says she'd rather have a live chum than a dead champion. Maybe she's right. I find she's apt to be.

First it had been the natural impulse of the thoroughbred —brute or human—to guard the helpless. Then, as the shapeless yellow baby grew into a slenderly graceful collie, his guardianship changed to stark adoration. He was Lady's life slave.

By the faint light Link could see the dog had not obeyed the order to turn his head. But at the man's tone of compassion the great plumy tail began to thump the ground in feeble response. "H'm!" grunted Link, letting the stone drop to the road, "got nerve, too, ain't you, friend? 'Tain't every cuss that can wag his tail when his leg's bust.

Consciousness of innocence is an excellent anchor, no doubt. But what good is an anchor after the ship has sunk?

Again and again the tobacco smell on the Master's breath and clothes had sickened the collie; so had the supposedly delicate perfumes used by the Mistress. Yet blithely had Lad endured these affronts to his tortured nostrils, in order to remain close beside these two humans who were his gods.

Link's father had had an inborn hatred of dogs. He would not allow one on the place. His overt excuse was that they killed sheep and worried cattle, and that he could not afford to risk the well-being of his scanty hoard of stock. Thus, Link had grown to manhood with no dog at his heels, and without knowing the normal human's love for canine chumship.

Chihuahuas and collies?" echoed the Mistress, "What a combination! It's like... judging hummingbirds and eagles!

But a collie is like no other dog. Back in his brain ever lurks the queerly wise instinct, though never incurable savagery, of the olden wolves he sprang from.

Then, slowly, very slowly, one of the two struggled from the unloving embrace and got, swaying and staggering and bleeding, to its feet. The other lay in a bloody torn huddle on the stony ground, its neck broken.

The dog-show virus is as insidious and as potent as a Borgian poison. Once let man or woman fall under its spell, and the winning of a blue ribbon seems more important than the winning of a college degree. The purple Winner Rosette is worth a fortune. The annexation of the mystic prefix, "Champion," to a loved dog's name is an honor comparable to the Presidency.

You're doing it, just for the sake of a chance to spend more money than you need to and for an independence that is only another word for uselessness. You're swapping the substance for the shadow.

The dog's plumed tail was smiting the dusty floor of the baggage car with happily resounding thumps as Abner talked to him. The man's voice and intonation were such as an animal likes. The collie licked the calloused hand that stroked his silken head. Mutely, a bond of chumship was established between the dog-lonely man and the ill-treated dog.

Also, there was a dash and latent energy about him that set two hundred and five girls to re-reading Laura Jean Libbey with a new and personal interest. Lida was not one of the two hundred and five. She was sensible. And her ambitions were all sane, not based on literary trash.

At sound and scent of the approaching huddle of sheep, Treve leaped to his feet; queer ancestral instincts tugging at the back of his alert young brain. In all his eight months of life he had never seen nor smelt a sheep. But his Scottish ancestors, for a hundred generations, had earned their right to live by tending such creatures as these which came trooping past the shack. Something far stronger than himself urged the put to action.

Now, as the six rushed in, a silver-and-snow catapult landed among them from nowhere in particular, snarling, snapping, slashing. No longer had Thor any use for the finesse which had been taught to him as part of his education as a herder. His master was down. These grunting devils were pressing in, avidly, to rip him to pieces. It was a moment for stark action.

Sunnybank Gray Dawn outlived all the Little People I have spoken of—except Tippy—in this book. Dawn was the last of the great Sunnybank collies. He died on May 30, 1929, leaving bitter heartaches behind him. Peace to his white soul!)

To a dog, all men are gods. That does not mean they are his won particular gods or that he has any interest in most of them. But they are of the race which he and his ancestors have served and guarded and worshipped since the days when the new earth was covered with vapor and he Neanderthal man tamed the first wolf-cub.

If you had had to live in the backwoods as I did – in the days when backwoods were really backwoods," answered his father. "you'd know that a deer is the deadliest and most dangerous brute anywhere in this part of the country. They've got soft eyes and they're nice to look at. But they're devils, at heart, every one of them. I'd rather take my chances with a wounded bear than with a wounded deer. Any expert hunter would.

If more folks were afraid to keep dogs, there'd be easier pickings for them that make their living by what they can find in folks' houses at night.

Laund was oblivious to the fivefold punishment the very hint of which had hitherto been enough to send him ki-yi-ing under Danny's bed. He was not fighting for himself, but for the child who was at once his ward and his deity. On himself he was taking the torture that otherwise must have been inflicted on Danny. For perhaps the millionth time in the history of mankind and of dog, the Scriptural adage was fulfilled, and perfect love was casting out fear.