"If a Dog Be Well Remembered"
We are thinking now of a setter whose coat was flame in the sunshine and
who so far as we are aware never entertained a mean or an unworthy
thought. This setter is buried beneath a cherry tree under four feet of
garden loam and at its proper season the cherry strews petals on the green
lawn of his grave. Beneath a cherry tree or an apple or any flowering
shrub of the garden is an excellent place to bury a good dog.
Beneath such trees such shrubs he slept in the drowsy summer or gnawed
at a flavorous bone or lifted head to challenge some strange intruder.
These are good places in life or in death. Yet it is a small matter. For
if the dog be well-remembered if sometimes he leaps through your dreams
actual as in life eyes kindling laughing begging it matters not at all
where the dog sleeps. On a hill where the wind is unrebuked and the trees
are roaring or beside a stream he knew in puppyhood or somewhere in the
flatness of a pastureland where most exhilarating cattle graze. It is all
one to the dog and all one to you and nothing is gained and nothing is
lost --if memory lives.
But there is one best place to bury a dog. If you bury him in this spot,
he will come to you when you call--come to you over the grim dim frontiers
of death and down the well-remembered path and to your side again.
And though you call a dozen living dogs to heel they shall not growl at
him nor resent his coming for he belongs there. People may scoff at you,
who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his footfall who hear no
whimper people who may never really have had a dog. Smile at them for
you shall know something that is hidden from them and which is well worth
the knowing.
The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of his master.
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