Quotes from Albert Payson Terhune

All dogs die too soon. Many humans don't die soon enough. A dog is only a dog. And a dog is too gorgeously normal and wholesome to be made ridiculous in death by his owner's sloppy sentimentality.

He ain't never been hit, nor yet swore at. An' he don't need to be. Treat him nice, like he's used to bein' treated. An' don't get sore on him if he mopes fer me, jes' at fust. Because he's sure to. Dogs ain't like folks. They got hearts. Folks has only got souls. I guess dogs has the best of it, at that.

He was Sunnybank Lad; eighty-pound collie; tawny and powerful; with absurdly tine white forepaws and with a Soul looking out from his deep-set dark eyes. Chum and housemate he was to two human gods; - a dog, alone of all worshipers, having the privilege of looking on the face of his gods and of communing with them without the medium of priest or of prayer.

Any man with money to make the purchase may become a dog's owner. But no man—spend he ever so much coin and food and tact in the effort—may become a dog's Master without the consent of the dog. Do you get the difference? And he whom a dog once unreservedly accepts as Master is forever that dog's God.

There are easier ways, you know, of showing how much inferior you are to a dog than by kicking him.

Some proverbs live because they are too true to die. Others endure because they have a smug sound and nobody has bothered to bury them.

A poet would have vowed that the still and white-shrouded wilderness was a shrine sacred to solitude and severe peace. Lad could have told him better. Nature (beneath the surface) is never solitary and never at peace.

Lad was not even consoled by the knowledge that he was guarding the slumbrous house. He was not guarding it. He had not the very remotest idea what it meant to be a watchdog. In all his five months he had never learned that there is unfriendliness in the world; or that there is anything to guard a house against.

There was a mysteriously comforting companionship in the dog's presence. Link found himself talking to him from time to time as to a fellow human. And the words did not echo back in eerie hollowness from the walls, as when he had sometimes sought to ease his desolation by talking aloud to himself.

I'm running it. Not Mr. Ruhl or any one else. Get that through your head, once and for all." "Looka here!" flashed Cleppy. "I don't aim to let any man speak that way to my wife. Cut it out, before I—" "You're fired," ordained Banks, in his best voice. "Go to the cashier and get your time. I'll not stand for any back talk or bluster here. Not from anybody. Get out!

By this graceless speech Dick Hazen received the key to the Seventh Paradise, and a life-membership in the world-wide Order of Dog-Lovers.

But-where in blue blazes did a thoroughbred collie ever pick up that bulldog grip?

Ferris was infected with the most virulent form of that weird malady as "dog-showitis." At first he had been tempted solely by the hope of winning the hundred-dollar prize. But latterly the urge of victory had gotten into his blood. And he yearned, too, to let the world see what a marvelous dog was his.

Over the brow of a ridge, across the winding high road, flashed a tawny and white shape that was silhouetted for an instant on the pulsing sky-line – the shape of a large collie running as not dog but a collie or a greyhound can run. Close to earth, in his sweeping stride, Buff was coming at full speed in response the far-heard whistle.

LOIS MADDEN was happy, very, very happy—until some one told her she was not. Happiness is a mystic bud that a single breath can wake into riotous bloom or wither to a shrivel. And it has no existence except in its possessor's heart. That is why a breath, laden with a few silly cynicisms from a wise fool, was able to do all sorts of things to Lois Madden's gladness.

Into the kitchen!" snorted the wet maid, "Into the kitchen?! I'm a lady! I don't go into kitchens. I--" "No?" queried the Master, trying once more not to laugh, "Well, my wife does. So does my mother. I spoke of the kitchen because it's the only room with a fire in it, in this weather. If you'd prefer the barn or-

Buff paused beneath a shut and locked window, some three feet from the ground. He gathered his waning strength f or one more effort, and sprang upward. Through the thin and cracked glass and the rotting sash he chose his way, alighting on the slimy concrete floor of the garage amid a shower of window particles.

There is no more merciless mental vivisector unhanged than Marcia Kibbe Klaw. Compared to her ice-bright scalpel, Balzac and Thackeray wielded wands of whipped-cream and swans-down.

Out stepped Lass, - tired, confused, a little frightened, but eagerly willing to make friends with a world which she still insisted on believing was friendly. It is hard to shake a collie pup's inborn faith in the friendliness of mankind, but once shaken, it is more than shaken. It is shattered beyond hope of complete mending.

A dog is only a dog. But a collie is – a collie. Says the scotch proverb: "A collie has the brain of a man, and the ways of a woman!

When a puppy takes fifty catnaps in the course of the day, he cannot always be expected to sleep the night through.