But the conductor suddenly looked over the robber’s shoulder, at the same time saying aloud to an imaginary person standing at the robber’s back:  “Don’t shoot him.”  Like a flash the robber whirled about to confront this new danger, and like a flash the conductor shot him down.  Show me, Mr. Burroughs, where the mental process in the robber’s brain was a shade different from the mental processes in Rollo’s brain, and I’ll quit nature-faking and join the Trappists.  Surely, when a man’s mental process and a dog’s mental process are precisely similar, the much-vaunted gulf of Mr. Burroughs’s fancy has been bridged.

I had a dog in Oakland.  His name was Glen.  His father was Brown, a wolf-dog that had been brought down from Alaska., and his mother was a half-wild mountain shepherd dog.  Neither father nor mother had had any experience with automobiles.  Glen came from the country, a half-grown puppy, to live in Oakland.  Immediately he became infatuated with an automobile.  He reached the culmination of happiness when he was permitted to sit up in the front seat alongside the chauffeur.  He would spend a whole day at a time on an automobile debauch, even going without food.  Often the machine started directly from inside the barn, dashed out the driveway without stopping, and was gone.  Glen got left behind several times.  The custom was established that whoever was taking the machine out should toot the horn before starting.  Glen learned the signal.  No matter where he was or what he was doing, when that horn tooted he was off for the barn and up into the front seat.

One morning, while Glen was on the back porch eating his breakfast of mush and milk, the chauffeur tooted.  Glen rushed down the steps, into the barn, and took his front seat, the mush and milk dripping down his excited and happy chops.  In passing, I may point out that in thus forsaking his breakfast for the automobile he was displaying what is called the power of choice—­a peculiarly lordly attribute that, according to Mr. Burroughs, belongs to man alone.  Yet Glen made his choice between food and fun.

It was not that Glen wanted his breakfast less, but that he wanted his ride more.  The toot was only a joke.  The automobile did not start.  Glen waited and watched.  Evidently he saw no signs of an immediate start, for finally he jumped out of the seat and went back to his breakfast.  He ate with indecent haste, like a man anxious to catch a train.  Again the horn tooted, again he deserted his breakfast, and again he sat in the seat and waited vainly for the machine to go.

They came close to spoiling Glen’s breakfast for him, for he was kept on the jump between porch and barn.  Then he grew wise.  They tooted the horn loudly and insistently, but he stayed by his breakfast and finished it.  Thus once more did he display power of choice, incidentally of control, for when that horn tooted it was all he could do to refrain from running for the barn.