Perhaps they fled together, the dog and the rose:
a singular and (on the whole) an imprudent elopement. Perhaps
the treacherous dog crept from the kennel, and the rebellious
rose from the flower-bed, and they fought their way out in company,
one with teeth and the other with thorns. Possibly this is why my
dog becomes a wild dog when he sees roses, and kicks them anywhere.
Possibly this is why the wild rose is called a dog-rose. Possibly not.
But there is this degree of dim barbaric truth in the quaint
old-world legend that I have just invented. That in these two cases
the civilized product is felt to be the fiercer, nay, even the wilder.
Nobody seems to be afraid of a wild dog: he is classed among
the jackals and the servile beasts. The terrible cave canem is written
over man's creation. When we read "Beware of the Dog," it means
beware of the tame dog: for it is the tame dog that is terrible.
He is terrible in proportion as he is tame: it is his loyalty and
his virtues that are awful to the stranger, even the stranger within
your gates; still more to the stranger halfway over your gates.
He is alarmed at such deafening and furious docility; he flees
from that great monster of mildness.
Well, I have much the same feeling when I look at the roses ranked
red and thick and resolute round a garden; they seem to me bold and
even blustering. I hasten to say that I know even less about my own
garden than about anybody else's garden.
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