"Get a fairly long chain for him," said the butcher, "and take him out
for a good stiff run every evening. Never let him get away from you;
make him mind you, and bring him home always thoroughly exhausted.
You stick to that for a month or two, regular, and you'll have him
like a little child."
"Um!--seems to me that I'm going to get more training over his job
than anybody else," muttered my uncle, as he thanked the man and left
the shop; "but I suppose it's got to be done. Wish I'd never had the
d--- dog now!"
So, religiously, every evening, my uncle would fasten a long chain to
that poor dog, and drag him away from his happy home with the idea of
exhausting him; and the dog would come back as fresh as paint, my
uncle behind him, panting and clamoring for brandy.
My uncle said he should never have dreamed there could have been such
stirring times in this prosaic nineteenth century as he had, training
that dog.
Oh, the wild, wild scamperings over the breezy common--the dog trying
to catch a swallow, and my uncle, unable to hold him back, following
at the other end of the chain!
Oh, the merry frolics in the fields, when the dog wanted to kill a
cow, and the cow wanted to kill the dog, and they each dodged round my
uncle, trying to do it!
And, oh, the pleasant chats with the old ladies when the dog wound the
chain into a knot around their legs, and upset them, and my uncle had
to sit down in the road beside them, and untie them before they could
get up again!
But a crisis came at last.
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