The Argosy, January 1906 — page 140: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Ne ER TCA CO Lie be! VINA ee 4 ey coy A Dog and a Gasoline Engine. BY FREDERICK WALWORTH BROWN. A boating experience with disorganized machinery at the prow and a mischievous bull-terrier at the helm. URCHARD was living an almost hermetically sealed existence, so he was not really sorry when Blinks turned up and firmly attached himself to the young man’s person. You see, when Burchard left college there had been a girl, and for perhaps a year everything was lovely. Then some- thing went wrong, and Burchard re- tired to the seclusion of his ancestral place, got into his lead coffin, so to speak, and pulled down the lid. That was Burchard all over. There was a moody streak in him, and a certain pig-headedness, combined with an in- trospective, self-questioning habit of thought. Where a more impulsive spirit would have rushed in and overwhelmed that girl’s affections, Burchard solemnly abol- ished himself and in the privacy of his hermitage nursed his fancied wrongs. He used to go down to the pine-clad blaff overlooking the upper river, and here, in the solitudes of nature, com- mune with bitterness in the abstract. No doubt Burchard was an ass, but a man can’t lelp being what his inherited predispositions make him, and Burch- ard’s cast of mind was in the direction of asininity. This was in the fall. Blinks turned up early in the follow- ing June. Whence did not appear. Burchard roused from gloomy reverie under the pines to find Blinks patiently regarding him from a distance of some ten feet, his head cocked slightly to the left. : There was nothing prepossessing about Blinks’ form or features. One had to know him to appreciate his charms. Burchard coldly inventoried his points: “ Bull-terrier head, wire-haired Scotch coat, English setter eyes, and—come here, boy—yes, the tail of a hound. Well, you are a jim-dandy.” Blinks came forward, whirling the ‘ hound’s tail in furious gyrations and winking his brown eyes in an excess of exuberant joy at being noticed. Burch- ard found his name engraved on his collar, deemed it appropriate, and promptly adopted him. There began a companionship which lasted the better part of a week. Blinks proved an excellent tonic fo1 Burchard’s blue devils.. He had a wire- haired terrier’s perfervid energy, plus the unreasoning tenacity of a bull-dog, and his frantic efforts to uproot an age- old pine were not conducive to melan- cholia in the mind of the spectator. Burchard used to He on the brown needles and watch him digging like a steam. shovel till the coveted root lay bare, whereupon he seized it and settled vahantly to the unequal task of drag- ging it bodily from Mother Earth and the parent tree. His tail.whirled like the spokes of a wheel, he growled, and Burch- ard found the heart to laugh. Wearied to exhaustion, Blinks .would desist and come grinning to lie by Burch- ard’s side and pant, till, energy having once more accumulated, he sprang_again to essay the impossible. Perhaps this stubborn perseverance, this perennial access of determination, acted upon Burchard somewhat as the unwearied efforts of the spider reani- mated the Bruce. At any rate, he left off reading Schopenhauer, Nordau, and the other pessimists, and applied himself to Blinks, who was essentially an opti- | mist of purest ray serene. They roamed the June woods together, though Burchard was forced to put a chain on the dog to trammel his barbaric desires in the direction of young rabbits and baby quail. But their main diver- sion was taken on the river.in Burchard’s launch. - This was a little eighteen-footer, with a two-horse-power gasoline engine, and the name of Puffing Billy. comicbook (Ee)