[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, — I think your correspondent
who would abolish dogs must have lived some time in the East to have acquired his strange views concerning them. There is a legend that our Blessed Lord, once passing a dead dog, heard men speak disparagingly of the carcase, whereupon He paused and said, " Pearls could not equal the whiteness of its teeth." Possibly it was the knowledge of this legend which caused a great Dutch painter to place a dog in the foreground of his picture of the Crucifixion. If dogs are sometimes troublesome and offensive, surely it is unjust to blame them for what the thoughtlessness or cruelty of their owners has brought about.
Jean Ingelow said she thought animals must have a future life, because, as far as she could see, it was only in that way God could make it up to them for the cruelty of Man towards them in this life. In some parts of the Arctic regions dogs are indispensable for obtaining the necessaries of life, and would it have been possible to discover the Poles without dogs? Also, are they not just as indispensable in our streets as guides to the blind, besides helping mankind in other ways mentioned by your correspondents. Love is the greatest thing in the world, and the greatest kind of love is that which sacrifices even life itself for love's sweet sake. One of the most beautiful stories told to me as a child was the story of Beth Gelert. The story of Gelert's heroic defence of his master's child is no isolated fact. All down the ages dogs have been the friend and helper of Man when Man has befriended them, and repaid his friendship with loving service, and I would conclude this letter with the lines which Sir Francis Doyle wrote over the grave of his dog: " Not without Hope in this sepulchral spot A wreath presaging Life we twine ; If God be Love, what sleeps below Was not without a spark Divine."
—Yours faithfully,
GEORGIANA CASTLE STEWART.
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