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11 Our Dumb Animals 1 (1878-1879)

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                                         I  would   not  enter  on  my   list of  friends,
                                         Though graced with polished manners and fine sense,
                                         Yet wanting sensibility, the man
                                         Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. - Cowpe.


Vol. 11.                                           BOSTON, JUNE, 1878.                                                                 No. 1.


            Birds of Killingvorth.
                [SELECTION No. 2.]
   Think of your words and orchards without birds!
      Of empty nests that cling to iouglis and beams
    As in an idiot's brain rcmembered words
      Hang empty 'mid the cobwebs of his dreams!
    Will bleat of flocks or hellowing of herds
      Make up for the lost music, when your teams
    Drag home the stingy harvest, and no more
    The feathered gleaners follow to your door?
     What! would you rather sc the incessant stir
    Of  insects in the windrows of the hay,
    And hear the locust and the grasshopper
    Their melancholy liurdy-gllrdies play ?
    Is this more pleasant to you than the whir
    Of  medow-lark, and her sweet roundelay,
    Or twitter of little field-fares, as you take
    Your nooning in the shade of bush and brake ?
  You  call them thieves and pillagers; but know,
     They are the wingod wardens of your farms,
     Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe,
     And from your harvests keep a hundred harms;
     Even the hhackest of them all, the crow,
     Renders good service as your man-at-arms,
     Crmsling the heetle in his coat of mail,
     And crying havoc on the slug and snail.
  How  can I teach your children gentleness,
     And mercy to the weak, and reverence
     For Life, which, in its weakness or excess,
     Is still a gleam of God's omnipotence,
     Or Death, which, seeming darkness, is no less
     The selfsame light, although averted hence,
   When  bv your laws, your actions, and your speech,
   You contradict the very things I teach ?
                                  -Longfellow.
             [Continued from'May paper.]
A  Sermon Preached  in the West Church, Boston,
                March 31, 1878.
              By REv. DR. BRTOL.
  Text:  Romi. viii. 19. What is duty but what
is due, what we owe, and how  much  we  owe, of
the picture or beauty the world is, to the animal
part of its tenants and inhabitants, so that Agassiz
was not going to be cantent with a heaven without
them.   The high hills are a refuge for the goats
and the rocks for the conies ; and what a wilder-
ness, indeed, much of the planet would be; what


a dismal blank  the air; what an empty, barren
drench the sea, but for the diverse tribes that live
and  play in these their several elements, cleaving
the transparent space, sliding through the liquid
depths, mining, burrowing, building in sand and
earth  and dust;  porpoise, whale, bee, beaver,
duck  and  sea-gull, eagle and bank-swallow; de-
stroy them all, half the charm of the globe were
gone.  Dog-shows,  cat-shows, cattle-shows, hen-
shows, men  and women  shows, any tribe insulated
is less fine than at large; but the beautiful setters
on the common,   or in the fields, surely the great
artist drew the forms of.
  Then  how much  beneqt, surely, from the animal
kingdom   to us, the chief animals who call our-
selves men; how  much  of our food, clothing, dec-
orations from these poor relations! I have seen a
green beetle in a lady's ear-ring; would the lady
perchance  carelessly crush the common   beetle
under her foot ? Plunder of Delhi ? Whtt  rob-
beries of sacred cities are ours ? The hat cloak,
shoe, shirt, hairy house-rug, feathered ornament in
some bonnet or cap, has cost, each one, a creature's
life.
  How  much  the horse has done for our human-
ity, - our delight, driving or riding, hauling of
merchandise or timber and stone for our struct-
tires of house and  store, canal and road  and
station and temple; are the whip  and the spur
and overload and lathered sides from fast dtiving
his proper return and requital ? How could man-
kind get  along without him ?  I was called to a
funeral some years ago, when all the horses were
sick, and no carriage could be got. We learned
how  much the horse did for us even in the burial
of our dead. Be kind to your horse who  serves
you.  A merciful man  is merciful to his beast.
A  gentleman  told me  he took a lady to drive
and she complained  the horse did not  go  fiast
enough;  she liked to travel quick.  Then, said
he,  you must go with some one else. I shall use
no whip.  Going up hill we involuntarily stoop
to get a purchase on our muscles to ease the ascent.
Uncheck  your horse going up hill; he, too, has a
back ! Lastly, our duty to the creatures, as part
of the providential scale of being. We are but up-
per rounds, - superstructure in the vast building,
-- the flower of their root and stem. As the'r phys-
ical organism is on the same plan, so they have
hints in them  of all our feelings and faculties.
Blind instinct! 'Tis a vory seeing thing; perhaps
the best part of us! They have calculation, con-
structiveness, engineering, mining.


  The  Texas  ants, horticulture; - the black and
white  ones, alas! slavery and  war  ( a fellow
feelino, even here, should make  us wondrous
kind.)   They  have love, memory,  loyalty, re-
pentance, or regret. Dogs watch  at the sick-bed
and  die of grief, and sometimes  show  all the
Christian virtues of self-sacrifice, constancy, hu-
mility, patience, with none of the vices. I know
there may be a foolish, insane fondness with some,
for pet creatures,to the neglect of other and higher
ties with man and woman  kind. Communion   with
angels and worship of God; but far more common
is a cruel handling or supercilious scorn; but if
you are vain, unkind, sly, treacherous, malicious,
even then the animals lay us under obligation in
the philosophy of langurige in furnishing names
for you, - fox, viper, wolf, peacock, sna te. But
the immense scale of being I admire and thank and
adore God  for; and I own  that even in heaven,
whose  seraphic glories I believe in and hope for,
I should not wish to be shut up to angels alone.
It would be very tiresome to have only one kind,
with all their supposed superior splendid para-
phernalia, pinions at their backs and harps  in
their hands,  the eternity of the labor, crowns
to wear and palms to brandish, or wave, or fling
down.   I ask what the form of th it coming eter-
nal life may be?   None   can now   tell. Only
there must  be  more  variety than  any  sacred
scripture hints. The  links of life will not be
fewer or more short, and at no point will either
progress be  blocked or  the underpinning  torn
away.
      And thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
      His faithful dog shall bear him company,
writes the bard of the savage.
  We  know  not in what shape, if at all, beast or
bird, shall enter paradise. But we know  not in
what shape we or ours shall enter it. The mother
knows  not how she shall see her nursling whom
death weaned from  her bosom.  We  know  not of
father, mother, lover, friend,  with what body
they shall come. My  faith is, whatever the way,
we shall be satisfied; and if Christ's rule of judg-
ment hold, which makes sympathy  the seal of fate,
our prospect will brighten in proportion as we
hve  diminished that pain the whole creation yet
groans  and travails with, and given increase of
blessedness to every living thing, and by precept
and  example  taught our children to enter with
follow-feeling into the joy and welfare of the low-
liest creature that breathes, and  abstain from


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