Kindness to a dog

Sham S. Misri

Once there was a dog without an owner. And it had nowhere to go, and nothing to eat: but it scraped for itself a miserable subsistence from the refuse of chance, eating and drinking out of gutters: and it was very thin, and covered with sores and wounds : for every one that saw it cursed it and abused it and drove it about, beating it with sticks and pelting it with stones; so that living in terror of perpetual death, it carried its tail between its legs, and in its sad eyes hunger fought for the mastery with fear and shame. So it continued to live, until at last its end was near.

And one day when it was so weak that it could hardly walk, there came by it along the road a bullock cart, containing a number of women who were coming from a wedding feast. And seeing the dog, they all began to jeer at it. But one of those women got down from the cart, and going up to the dog with compassion in her heart offered it a piece of cake. And the dog looked at her with wistful eyes, not understanding; for in its whole life no one had ever done it a kindness of any sort. And after a while, it wagged, very gently, the very end of its thin tail, showing a sign of thankfulness to the woman.