This he would naturally attribute to the
quality of his fare, and would change his diet a dozen times a day,
his _menu_ in the twelve working hours comprising an astonishing range
of articles, from a wood-saw to a kettle of soft soap--edibles as
widely dissimilar as the zenith and the nadir, which, also, he would
eat. So catholic an appetite was, of course, exceptional: ordinarily
Jerusalem was as narrow and illiberal as the best of us. Give him
plenty of raw beef, and he would not unsettle his gastric faith by
outside speculation or tentative systems.
I could relate things of this dog by the hour. Such, for example, as
his clever device for crossing a railway. He never attempted to do
this endwise, like other animals, for the obvious reason that, like
every one else, he was unable to make any sense of the time-tables;
and unless he should by good luck begin the manoeuvre when a train was
said to be due, it was likely he would be abbreviated; for of course
no one is idiot enough to cross a railway track when the time-table
says it is all clear--at least no one as long as Jerusalem. So he
would advance his head to the rails, calling in his outlying
convolutions, and straightening them alongside the track, parallel
with it; and then at a signal previously agreed upon--a short wild
bark--this sagacious dog would make the transit unanimously, as it
were.
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