“Of course you don’t think this true; well, then, don’t think it true.  But you have never seen him of winter mornings get up before I do and try to keep me out of the bath-tub.  He’ll station himself at the bath-room door; and as I approach he will look at me with an air of saying; ’Now don’t climb into that cold water!  Stand on the edge of it and lap it if you wish!  But don’t get into it.  Drink it, man, don’t wallow in it.’  He waits until I finish, and then he speaks his mind plainly again:  ’Now see how wet you are!  And to-morrow you will do the same thing.’  And he will stalk away, suspicious of the grade of my intelligence.

“He helps me to dress and undress.  You’d know this if you studied his face when I struggle to brush the dust off of my back and shoulders:  the mortification, the sense of injustice done him, in his having been made a quadruped.  When I stoop over to take off my shoes, if I do it without any noise and he lies anywhere near, very well; but if I am noisy about it, he always comes and takes a seat before me and assists.  Then he makes his same speech:  ’What a shame that you should have to do this for yourself, when I am here to do it for you, but have no hands.’

“You know his portrait in my sitting room.  When it was brought home and he discovered it on the wall, he looked at it from different angles, and then came across to me with a wound and a grievance:  ’Why have you put that thing there?  How can you, who have me, tolerate such a looking object as that?  See the meanness in his face!  See how used up he is and how sick of life!  See what a history is written all over him—­his crimes and disgraces!  And you can care for him when you have me, your Brown.’  After I am dead, I expect him to publish a memorial volume entitled ’Reminiscences of the late Judge Ravenel Morris, By his former Friend, afterward his Valet, Taurus-Canis.’”

The long drowsing days of summer had come.  Business was almost suspended; heat made energy impossible.  Court was not in session, farmers were busy with crops.  From early morning to late afternoon the streets were well-nigh deserted.

Ravenel Morris found life more active for him during this idlest season of his native town.  Having no business to prefer, people were left more at leisure to talk with him; more acquaintances sat fanning on their doorsteps and bade him good night as he passed homeward.  There were festivals in the park; and he could rest on one of the benches and listen to the band playing tunes.  He had the common human heart in its love of tunes.  When tunes stopped, music stopped for him.  If anything were played in which there was no traceable melody, when the instruments encountered a tumult of chords and dissonances, he would exclaim though with regretful toleration: 

“What are they trying to do now?  What is it all about?  Why can’t music be simple and sweet?  Do noise and confusion make it better or greater?”