Memoirs of a Yellow Dog by O Henry

Books at Bedtime by Calming Anxiety Memoirs of a Yellow Dog by O Henry I don't suppose it will not any of you people off your purge to read a contribution from an animal. Mr Kipling and a good many others have demonstrated the fact that animals can express themselves in remunitive English. A no magazine goes to press nowadays without an animal story in it except the old-styles' mansoles that are still running pictures of Brian and a Montpellé-Harrie but you needn't look for any stuck-up literature in my piece such as Beiru, the Bear and Snakeoo, the Snake and Tamanu, the Tidea, the Torque in the Jungle books a yellow dog that spent most of his life in a cheap New York flat sleeping in a corner on an old Satine underscored the one she spilled put wine on at Lady Longshoreman's banquet mustn't be expected 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 in 23rd trying to sell me to a fat lady Old Mother Hubbard was boosting me to beat the band as a genuine Pomeranian, Hamiltonian, Red Irish, Cocken China, Stoke, Pogis, Box Terrier the fat lady chased a V around among the samples of gross grain flannelet in her shopping bag till she cornered it and gave up from that moment I was a peck a mammazone witsy squid-elons say gentle reader did you ever have a 200 pound woman breathing a flavor of camembert cheese and pure ispania pick you up and wallet per nose all over you remarking all the time in an Emmaane's tone of voice oh oozaum ulem, dudlem, woodlem, dudlem, bitsy, witsy, scootlem from a pedigree 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 primavial pups that no were 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 an ordinary thing in New York paved with a parian marble in the entrance hall and cobblestones above the first floor our flat was three well not flights climbs up my mistress rented it unfernished and put in the regular things 1903 antique unholsted parlor set oil chromo engages in a Harlem tea house rubber plant and husband biserious 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 two cans and flamingos 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 a 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 piece of string for a walk if men knew how women passed the time when they are alone they'd never marry Laura, Leanne, Gibby, Peenup brittle and 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 peaking through a hole in the window shade into the flat across the air shaft that's about all there is to it 20 minutes before time for him to come home from work and she straightens up the house fixes her rat so it won't show and gets out a lot of sewing for a 10 minute bluff I let a dog's life in that fat 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 driveling poodle palava and kiss me on the nose but what could I do? a dog can't chew gloves I began to feel sorry for hubby dog my cats if I didn't we look so much alike that people noticed it when we went out so we shook the streets that Morgan's cab drivers down and took to climbing the piles of last December snow on the streets where the cheap people live one evening when we were thus promenading and I was trying to look like a priceant burnard and the old man was trying to look like he wouldn't have murdered the first organ rider he heard play Mandelsons wedding march I looked at him and said in my way "What are you looking so sour about?

you oakum trims lobster if you don't kiss you you don't have to sit on a lap and listen to talk that would make the book of a musical comedy sound like the maxims of apecticus you ought to be thankful that you're not a dog brace up Benedict and bid the blues be gone the maq from own your missap look down at me with almost canine intelligence in his face "Why doggy?" says he "Good doggy you almost look like you could speak what is it doggy? 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 tanned area a husband strung it and took it out every evening but he always came home cheerful and whistling one day I touched noses with black and tan in the hall and I struck him from a loose sedidation "See here will the skip?" I says you know they didn't the nature of a real man to play dry nurse to a dog in public I never saw one leeched to a bow-ow yet that didn't look like he'd have to lick every other man that looked at him but your boss comes in every day as perkey and set up as an amateur prestigigator doing the egg trick how does he do it? tell me does he like it? him said the black and tan "Why?" he uses nature's own remedy he gets spethylicated at first when we go out he says shy as the man on the steamer who would rather play petro when they make him 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 sidestepped those swinging doors the pointer I got from that terrier set me to think him one evening about six o'clock my mistress ordered him to get busy and do the ozone act for lovie I was concealed it until now but that is what she called me the black and tan was called "tweeteness" I consider that I have the bulge on him as far as you could chase a rabbit still lovie is something of a nomenclateral a bit of a tin can on the tail of one's self-respect at quite a 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 dispatches that lets the family know that little Alice is bogged while gathering lilies in the brook why darn my eyes said the old man with a grin darn my eyes if the saffron colored sun of a seltze lemonade I'm asking me to take a drink let me see how long has it been since I saved shoe leather by keeping one foot on the footrest I believe I'm I knew I had him hot scotches he took sitting at a table for an hour he kept the cambells coming I sat by his side wrapping for the waiter with my tail and eating free lunch such as Mama in her flat never equaled with a homemade truck brought at a delicatessen store 18 minutes before Papa came home when the products of Scotland were all exhausted except the ride-bred the old man and wound 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 doggy since he, good doggy she can't kiss you anymore good doggy go away and get run over by a street car and be happy I refuse to leave I let and frisked around the old man's leg happy as a pup on a rug your old flea-headed wood-chakka chaser I said to him you moon-beeing rabbit-pointing egg-steeling old beagle can't you see that I don't want to leave you can't you see that were both pups in the woods and the missus the cruel uncle after you with a dish bowl and me with a flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail why not cut that all out and be pards forever more maybe we'll say that 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 doggy says he finally you don't live more than a dozen lives on the surf and very few of us lived to be more than 300 if I ever see that flat anymore I'm a flat and if you do your flatter and that's no flattery I'm offering 60 to one that Westwoodhoe wins out by the length of a dashing there was no string but I've froliced along with my master to the 23rd Street ferry and the cats on the route saw reason to give thanks that the pre-handsyle claws had been given them on the jersey side my master said to a stranger who stood eating a current burn me and my doggy we are bound for the Rocky Mountains but what pleased me the most was when my old man pulled both of my ears till I held and said you common monkey-headed rat tail sulfur colored son of a doormat do you know what I'm going to call you? I thought of love and I wind, don't you think?

I'm going to call you Pete said my master as if I'd been given five tails that I couldn't have done enough wagging to do justice to the occasion you