RAGGETY

HIS LIFE AND ADVENTURES

BY

MARY JOSEPHINE WHITE

WITH DRAWING BY

CLIFFORD K. BERRYMAN

PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR BY

H. L. & J. B. McQueen, Inc.

Washington, D. C. 1913

Copyright, 1913, by Mary Josephine White

Number .... OF THIS EDITION THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN COPIES HAVE BEEN PRINTED FROM CASLON TYPE AND THE TYPE DISTRIBUTED

To The Lovely Lady and The Lovely Lady’s Husband

The Arrival of Raggety

He trotted into my life one sunshiny day in May over there in a town on the Hudson. He was trying to teach a hound puppy with very large dull paws how to play. The puppy was clumsy, he was slow, he panted abominably, but the little yellow dog went round and round him in flashing circles, the circles growing smaller and faster. The center of them all came and the fluff turned like down before the wind and flew away to rest. I laughed out loud with joy at the fun of that little yellow dog. As he rested he thrust his hind-legs out on either side, in a way peculiar to terriers, and from my window looked an animated doormat. “How slow and stupid that hound puppy is!” said every hair of the gay little yellow body.

[Pg 14]

Next morning I was sitting on the doorstep watching the robins busy among the rain of apple blossoms. I know I felt expectant: there was that delicious Spring hush of an awakening world, and one’s heart waited too.

Round the hedge that same little yellow dog trotted into my life. I called to him, “Raggety, Raggety, how do you do?” And he came straight to me, looked at me with sad questioning beautiful brown eyes, my eyes answered, and we knew each other. From that moment I belonged to him and he to me. He let me carry him to my room,—he was such a tiny thing, so little, so independent,—protesting with faint growls. I saw his neglected hair was matted, tangled, muddy, and that his nose was sore; his eyes alone preserved the beauty to which he had been born. Then I let him go but found from the gardener where he belonged. Where he came from no one[Pg 15] knows but he himself and he has never told me a word about it.

This is all I could find out. Down in the poor little settlement under the hill, which we called “The Cabbage Patch” in memory of Mrs. Wiggs, there lived The Junkman with his wife, many children big and little, and an old white horse. Every Monday the man hitched the white horse to his peddler’s cart and drove back among the hills and the tiny villages and scattered farms. The cart was always filled on Mondays with new bright jingling tins, pots, pails, pans, with here and there a japanned tea-caddy or a bright blue wash basin for a touch of color. When the cart came back to town towards the end of the week,—the better the trade, the sooner it came,—all its glory had departed. No more shining pans, but instead great dingy bags of rags, the clank of old iron, and perhaps on the top of the heap a dilapidated[Pg 16] baby-carriage, the cast-off things of life. The horse seemed older and wearier; the man more bent, more broken. Earlier that Spring, on his way down from the hills, The Junkman noticed a little dog trotting under the cart. Where he joined him he did not

know, at what house he had seen him he could not remember, only that the little long-haired yellow dog had come down from the hill-farms with him, had followed the cart, did not leave him when he reached home, and had become a playmate to his children. Little tousled things the children were, tumbling over each other in the two rooms that were home to them. The little yellow dog shared their play, their food, their bed, until the day that he came up the hill to teach that stupid hound-puppy to run races.

Through the gardener’s helper I made a bargain with The Junkman. He was[Pg 17] glad of the little extra money, even though the children were sorry to lose their gay good-natured playmate, and the little yellow dog became mine.

I shall never forget that first arrival. The gardener’s man (I always feel that the larger part of the little bargain money went into his pocket) came leading him proudly, with a rope heavy enough to have dragged a cow to market about that active liberty-loving fluffy neck, and reproaches stared from those brown eyes.

Then began a series of struggles, heartrending for the little dog and for his new mistress. He had to be washed, not once, but twice and thrice, yea, unto the fourthly, to get him clean and sweet and habitable and uninhabited. We emerged from the bath room, he a glaring, fiercely protesting bundle in a bath towel, I with flaming cheeks, weary back, and collar awry.

He mourned the loss of his little jolly[Pg 18] tousled playmates, refused to eat, refused to be comforted. Then he persisted in returning to the Cabbage Patch at every opportunity, and this meant fees to the gardener’s helper, anxious waiting, and laborious cheerfulness when he, sulky and unwilling, returned.

[Pg 19]

Raggety Chooses

This went on for four or five days. Then one morning I took him on my lap and said, “Raggety dear, I don’t want you to stay with me unless you want to. I want you for my pleasure, but if it isn’t your pleasure too, you must go back to the Cabbage Patch. Here you will have love and care, plenty to eat, and the baths which you hate. There you will have the little children to play with, scraps to eat, perhaps be cold, and surely will be dirty, with little sore eyes and nose. But I won’t try to keep you if you want to go, you must choose for yourself.” Those sad rebellious eyes looked into mine, and with aching heart I put him down and made no attempt at shutting the doors that day and off he went to his little playmates. I did not know whether I should[Pg 20] see him again. I waited through the day, but no Raggety. But quite late there came a gentle scratching at one of the long windows. You can imagine how I hastened to open it and in marched Master Raggety with a ridiculous air of possession, as much as to say, “Well, here I am, home again.” And the

curious part of his choice was that it was final. He never again went back to the Patch, never even offered to go.

Of course, a very reasonable person, who does not understand dog nature, will say, “Why, The Junkman’s family drove him away, would not let him into the house, did not feed him; so after walking about for many hours, he decided to return to the place where he knew food and shelter waited for him.” But that does not, to my mind, explain why he never again wanted to return to The Junkman’s, why he seemed willing to leave his little playmates and a life of[Pg 21] unwashed freedom. I believe that he really chose me, that he understood my talk of the morning, knew my affection, and that his own little heart responded.

[Pg 22]

Raggety’s Education

Where he had come from no one knew but himself. He had all the pretty ways of a pet dog when he came, loved to be petted, could sit on his haunches and beg, give paw, and had the ingratiating ways of a loved and loving comrade. What sort of a home had he left? Why did he leave it voluntarily to follow the Raggedy Man? Was his soul fettered and cramped and did he long for Adventure and the Open Road and,—dare it? When you see what a little dog he is, when you know his liberty-loving spirit, when you realize that he meets change and vicissitude with courage, you feel sure that he comes of good stock. Mary Cholmondley said in one of her books, “Good blood is never cowardly,” and Raggety has good blood.

Three humiliating and exasperating[Pg 23] new bonds he learned to endure with me. First, a collar, and a collar with an annoying bell which jingled as he walked and scampered. How he rolled and pushed his head about, and wriggled on his back to get rid of that abominable thing about his neck! Second, he had to learn to walk attached to a leash and that was terrible. I carefully fastened the clip of the leash into the ring of his collar and started, and he refused to use his legs. So for a few steps I dragged him on his little body but that looked and seemed cruel. Then I carried him for a few steps, set him down again, again no legs, and the little body dragged over the dirt of the road. Alas and alack, how long it took before he submitted!—was it days, was it weeks? I have forgotten, but just as he chose to return and stay with me, one fine day he decided that he would walk properly at the end of a leather strap. Now it has come to mean a walk, so he kisses it.

[Pg 24]

The third thing he had to learn with his new mistress and to which he never in all the years of our friendship has become reconciled is the weekly bath. “Any refuge in a storm,” he seeks the darkest closets and the deepest corners under beds as safe retreats and is only dislodged by coaxing most persuasive and long-continued. How he hates it!

[Pg 25]

His Love of Travel

Whether his instinctive love of adventure persists, or whether he has the confidence that where I go he too may go in safety, I do not know, but I do know that Raggety really loves to travel, to go, that the excitement of change rouses and amuses him. When bags and trunks are brought out he is very depressed for often they mean separation, a parting from one he loves, and once when a trunk, half-packed, was left standing open, in he got and curled down to sleep, saying quite plainly, “If this goes, pack me in it and take me along.” But when the time comes for departure and he finds he is to go too, his excitement is intense. Capering, jumping, barking, he expresses his joy and rapture.

When going for long visits he takes[Pg 26] his bed with him, an open dog-basket inherited from older generations of little pet dogs. He gets into this of his own accord, is lifted into the baggage car, his leash is attached to one of the handles and there he stays. Unless the kindly baggage-men find that he can sit up and “beg,” when he often has the freedom of the car. And the men always report at the end of the journey, “A very good dog, ma’am,” sometimes adding, “and a cute one.” His wide friendliness and gentle manners win him friends on street cars, trains, among any community where he lives. His traveling equipment is such as belongs to any gentlemanly dog. His bed, his mattress, his blanket,—for Royalty ever carry Their Own,—his comb and brush, his washcloth, his soap, his powder (for a chance and vulgar inhabiter), his collars, and his harness (now grown fat in later years, a collar slips over his head and is not safe in traveling).[Pg 27] This harness was also an inheritance from a dear little dead girl-dog, of whom you will hear again.

[Pg 28]

How Raggety Proved Himself a Real Dog

Most men like big dogs, hunting dogs, useful dogs, watch dogs. They don’t understand that idea of a little dog, a dog small enough to take up in your arms and cuddle. A dog that will get up on the lounge beside you, lay his tiny head in your lap, give a comfortable and comforting sigh, and settle himself for a delicious nap next to “Missie Nannie” while she reads or sews. Men don’t have that ache for something little in their arms the way we empty-armed women do. So they don’t care for and love little dogs. And my brother-in-law was one of the most men. Even during the courtship he ventured, when he ought to have been studying to make good impressions, to call Raggety “a silly dog,” “a lollypop.” I know Raggety resented this as much as[Pg 29] I did, for he soon showed Brother-in-Law that he was no “lollypop.”

They were tremendously in love, with that beautiful abandon and obliviousness of surroundings which is characteristic of the Divine Passion, and they went to walk that lovely summer afternoon by the ponds and never even saw that Raggety had gone along. He trotted demurely at their lagging heels until the pond was reached, then with a squeal of joy he chased a water-rat, dug deep into its watery hole, emerged panting, triumphant, the rat in his jaws, gloriously black-mud from nose to tail. The oblivious ones were forced to witness the triumph and a mild feeling of respect crept over Brother-in-Law’s indifference. The oblivious ones were also beautifully dressed in fresh and gay-colored clothing as becometh lovers. Having dispatched the rat, Raggety saw their awakened interest and pleasure and running gaily to them shook violently,[Pg 30] depositing all the black mud and water possible upon that gay clothing, and frisked about as much as to say, “Now, will you ever call me a silly dog again?”

Later, after the honeymoon, when earth had once more become their abode, Raggety visited the Brother-in-Law. He at once adopted him as a comrade, not that Brother-in-Law wanted to be so adopted, but that made no difference to Raggety’s enthusiasm. He insisted upon walking with him, and as there was deep snow that winter, my sister said she often would see her tall man approaching, followed by what looked like a yellow feather. Buried between the snow banks, only the tip of Raggety’s tail waved into sight. Then too he adopted Brother-in-Law’s favorite chair. Pushed out of it at first whenever its master wanted it, Raggety genially but continuously chose that special chair as his own place of repose and never offered to leave it voluntarily. Instead[Pg 31] he would raise polite beseeching eyes, and with a casual wave of his tail, question, “You don’t really want this chair, do you?” It was all so politely, so serenely accomplished that in the end Raggety won out and kept the chair. Ever since then Brother-in-Law has had respect for the “silly dog” and even inquires

how he does with a reminiscent chuckle. He remembers the episodes of the mud-bath and the winner of the disputed property-rights in special chairs.

[Pg 32]

How He “Borned His Baby”

During one winter it was not possible for me to keep Raggety with me. I had to find him a home in the village near enough so that I could go and get him for a daily walk. His home was with the family of one of the undergardeners, where there was already one baby girl toddling about and hugging Raggety to her heart’s content. He adores children, no amount of pulling or patting or hugging by tiny hands and arms can upset his good-nature. If his hair becomes too much involved, a faint growl warns tiny fingers to be more gentle, but Raggety can always be trusted with children.

So Raggety lived and played with the Donahues and then a new baby came. Mrs. Margaret faintly told them that Raggety was under the bed, so down on[Pg 33] hands and knees got Mr. Donahue and the doctor, but no coaxing, no blandishments would dislodge the faithful little yellow dog who had mounted guard over his Margaret, who had been so good to him and was now in such mortal distress. Vicious snapping teeth and savage small glaring green eyes were the welcome given out-stretched hands which would have pulled him forth. There was much to be done otherwise, the attempted evictment was abandoned, the little dog-guardian was forgotten. So through the long night he waited without food, without water, without rest. In the dim light of early dawn, Mrs. Margaret lying quiet with a tiny baby on her right arm felt the gentle touch of a little dog’s paw on her shoulder. It was Raggety come to see her and the strange little bundle. She spoke his name, “Raggety,” he answered with a soft whimper of relief, sighed with pleasure and stretched himself on Margaret’s[Pg 34]

other arm, across from the new baby. Margaret was his Margaret, the baby was his baby.

[Pg 35]

How Raggety Met His Lovely Lady

He met His Lovely Lady long before I met her. And perhaps somewhere else she’ll tell you herself about their meeting, but this is what I know of it. I was going away for the summer to study and in a place where little dogs are not encouraged, so he had to stay behind, and Nellie Jones, who was in my Sunday School class and also my god-daughter, brought him to the train to say “Good-bye.” He was rather excited by the crowds and the train so I did not let him come out onto the platform but made Nellie stay in the waiting-room with him, and there I, with a sad heart, said good-bye for a little while. He wagged his tail encouragingly, his eyes fixed on mine waiting for that happy permission to go which I could not give; Nellie cried and clung about[Pg 36] my neck and I hurried away so that the parting, which must be, might be quickly accomplished. I turned at the door and saw the sad little group, Nellie with her scant little skirt and long legs dangling from the bench, and sitting next to her, with that world-old look of infinite patience and of things not understood but

endured, sat that little yellow comrade I was leaving behind. “Good-bye, Raggety. Good-bye, dear faithful little friend.”

How many times have I said it through the long years, but as many times have I said in greeting as I said at our very first meeting, “Raggety, Raggety, how do you do?” I dare not think of that time when I must say, “Good-bye, Raggety. Good-bye, dear faithful little friend,” with no hopes of a greeting to follow.

There the Lovely Lady found them, Nellie and Raggety. And two years later I told her of my little dog, for did[Pg 37] not the Lovely Lady herself have precious tiny Balribbie of gentle memory. I told her of Raggety’s living at the Donahue’s, and how I missed his warm fluffiness. And then I spoke of one of the many homes Raggety and I have had together and she exclaimed with delight, “Why, I know Raggety!” And she’s going to tell you herself how they met.

[Pg 38]

His Devotion to His Lovely Lady

First of all the Lovely Lady loves dogs and knows what they think about, and what they like to do, and what they want. Then she has the most enchanting way of talking to you if you are a dog and a little fluffy dog. She has a dance that fills you with pleasure, so that you caper about her in sheer ecstasy of joy. Best of all her possessions, besides her own lovely self, is “Jeems.” Jeems is a terrier too, young, rather rough, but good company for a walk, and since Raggety has licked him into shape by many instructions of what to do and what not to do, administered in the shape of growls, Jeems is really an all-round good dog. When Raggety came to live near to his Lovely Lady and Jeems, he found that of a morning a breakfast with these friends started[Pg 39] the day satisfactorily. So off he will start with never a thought of “Home and Mother,” when there is the prospect of a ’licious breakfast, to be followed by a walk in the woods.

His marked attentions to his Lovely Lady are witnessed and encouraged by me and by the Lovely Lady’s Husband. Neither of us could be even a tiny bit jealous of the Lovely Lady and her devoted little lover, Raggety. Only recently Raggety showed that it is indeed his Lovely Lady and no one else whom he follows. One unhappy day she packed her trunk and went away for a visit, and during all her absence neither the gambols of Jeems nor the blandishments of the Lovely Lady’s Husband had any effect on his faithful little heart. He simply would not, could not go to that empty house; he stayed away for many days.

And will you tell me how he learned[Pg 40] of the Lovely Lady’s return? He was fast asleep in his little bed at home at the late hour of her arrival. But bright and early the next morning he was at her door greeting her with barks of welcome, ready to go in and have breakfast with her. What or who told him that she was back again? Did some dog friend tell him early in the morning that she had come? Did the fragrance of her presence come to his keen sagacious nostrils? Did some occult sense, denied us human beings, tell him that his loneliness was over, and that his little heart again might beat with joy?

[Pg 41]

How Raggety Bit The Great Man and How He Then Apologized