JONES READERS BY GRADES BOOK FIVE PATRASCHE LOUISE DE LA RAMÉE LOUISE DE LA RAMÉE is an English author, whose work is of uneven merit. Some of her short stories are exquisite bits of literature. NOTE. Patrasche is the name of the noble dog whose story is told in a little book called "A Dog of Flanders." He was a dog of Flanders, - yellow of hide, large of 5 head and limb, with wolf-like ears that stood erect, and legs bowed and feet widened in the muscular development wrought in his breed by many generations of hard service. Patrasche came of a race which had toiled from sire to son in Flanders many a century,- slaves of slaves, beasts 10 of the shafts and the harness, creatures that lived straining their sinews in the gall of the cart, and died breaking their hearts on the flints of the streets. The owner of Patrasche was a sullen, brutal man, who heaped his cart full with pots and pans and other wares, 15 and left Patrasche to draw the load as best he might, whilst he himself lounged idly by the side, smoking his pipe and stopping at every wine shop on the road. Happily for Patrasche- or unhappily - he was very strong; so that he did not die, but managed to drag on a wretched existence under the brutal burdens, the hunger, the thirst, the blows, the curses, and the exhaustion which are the only wages with which the Flemings repay the most patient 5 and laborious of all their four-footed victims. One day, after two years of his long and deadly agony, Patrasche was going on as usual along one of the straight, dusty, unlovely roads that lead to the city of Antwerp. It was. full midsummer, and very warm. His cart was very 10 heavy, piled high with goods in metal and in earthenware. His owner sauntered on without noticing him otherwise than by the crack of the whip as it curled round his quivering loins. Going along thus, in the full sun, on a scorching highway, having eaten nothing for 15 twenty-four hours, and, which was far worse to him, not having tasted water for nearly twelve, being blind with dust, sore with blows, and stupefied with the merciless weight which dragged upon his loins, Patrasche, for once, staggered and foamed a little at the mouth, and fell. 20 He fell in the middle of the white, dusty road, in the full glare of the sun; he was sick unto death, and motionless. His master gave him the only medicine in his pharmacy, -kicks and oaths and blows with a cudgel of oak, which had been often the only food and 25 drink, the only wage and reward, offered to him. But Patrasche was beyond the reach of any torture or of any curses. Patrasche lay, dead to all appearances, down in the white powder of the summer dust. After a while, finding it useless to assail his ribs with punishment and his ears with maledictions, his owner kicked his body 5 heavily aside into the grass, and, groaning and muttering in savage wrath, pushed the cart lazily along the road uphill. Patrasche lay there, flung in the grass-green ditch. It was a busy road that day, and hundreds of people, on foot 10 and on mules, in wagons or in carts, went by. After a time, amongst the holiday makers, there came a little old man who was bent and lame and very feeble. He looked at Patrasche, paused, wondered, turned aside, then kneeled down in the rank grass and weeds of the ditch, and sur- 15 veyed the dog with kindly eyes of pity. There was with him a little rosy, fair-haired, dark-eyed child of a few years old, who pattered in amidst the bushes, that were for him breast-high, and stood gazing with a pretty seriousness upon the poor, great, quiet beast. Thus it was that these two first met, and the big Patrasche. the little Nello 20 Old Jehan drew the sufferer homeward to his own little hut, which was a stone's throw off amidst the fields, and there tended him with so much care that the sickness 25 |