我想，阅读来自动物的贡献并不会让你们中的任何人感到惊讶。吉卜林先生和许多其他人都证明了动物能够用有报酬的英语表达自己，而如今没有一本杂志在印刷时不带有动物故事，除了那些仍在刊登布莱恩和蒙特佩尔霍灾难图片的老式月刊。

但是，你可别指望在我的作品中看到任何高深的文学，比如《丛林书》中熊熊、蛇蛇和虎虎所讲的那种故事。一个生活在廉价纽约公寓里的黄色狗狗，大部分时间都窝在角落里，趴在一条旧缎面裙子上（那条是她在长岸女工协会宴会上洒上波特酒的），可别指望他能用高超的语言艺术来表演什么把戏。

我是一只黄色小狗出生的；日期、地点、血统和体重都不知道。我最早的记忆是，一位老妇人在百老汇和二十三街的地方用一个篮子试图把我卖给一位胖女士。老哈伯德太太极力推荐我，声称我是名正言顺的波美拉尼亚-汉布尔顿-红爱尔兰-鸡毛耙-斯托克波吉斯狐犬。那位胖女士在她的购物袋里追逐着一个“V”字母，直到把它围住后放弃。从那一刻起，我成了宠物——妈妈最爱的“小甜心”。亲爱的读者，你可曾体验过被一位体重200磅的女士捧起来，她身上散发着卡门贝尔奶酪和西班牙皮肤的味道，把她的鼻子拍到你身上，同时用艾玛·伊姆斯的声音说道：“哦，谁是我的小宝贝，乖乖的小家伙，亲亲的小可爱？”

从一只有血统的黄色小狗，我长大成了一只看起来像安哥拉猫与一盒柠檬混合而成的匿名黄色杂种狗。但是我的主人从来没有觉察到。她认为诺亚方舟上那两只原始的小狗只是我的祖先的旁系支脉。为了防止她把我送去麦迪逊广场花园参加西伯利亚猎犬奖项，甚至动用了两名警察。

让我告诉你关于那间公寓的事情。那栋楼在纽约算是普通的，入口大厅铺着帕里安大理石，第一层以上则是小鹅卵石。我们的公寓在三层——好吧，不是楼梯，是爬上去的。我的女主人租下这间未家具的公寓，并添置了常规的东西——1903年的古董软垫客厅套装、一幅描绘哈莱姆茶馆中的歌伎的油画、一盆橡胶植物和一个丈夫。

天呐！我真为那个二足动物感到难过。他是个小个子，有着沙色的头发和胡须，跟我很像。受压迫？那可真是的，热带鸟类的喙全都扑在他身上。他洗碗，听着我女主人谈论二楼穿着松鼠皮外套的女士晾在晒衣绳上的廉价破烂的东西。每晚当她准备晚餐时，她都让他牵着我出去溜达。

emoirs ofa Yellow DogI DON'T SUPPOSE it will knock any of you people off your perch to read a contribution from an animal. Mr. Kipling and a good many others have demonstrated the fact that animals can express them­ selves in remunerative English, and no magazine goes to press nowadays without an animal story in it, except the old-style monthlies that are still running pictures of Bryan and the Mont Pelée horror.But you needn't look for any stuck-up literature in my piecesuch as Bearoo, the bear, and Snakoo, the snake, and Tammanoo, the tiger, talk in the jungle books. A yellow dog that's spent most of his life in a cheap New York flat, sleeping in a corner on an old sateen underskirt (the one she spilled port wine on at the Lady Longshoremen's banquet), mustn't be expected to perform any tricks with the art of speech.I was born a yellow pup; date, locality, pedigree and weight unknown. The first thing I can recollect, an old woman had me in a basket at Broadway and Twenty-third trying to sell me to a fat lady. Old Mother Hubbard was boosting me to beat the band as a genuine Pomeranian-Hambletonian-Red-Irish-Cochin-China- Stoke-Pogis fox terrier. The fat lady chased a V around among the samples of gros grain flannelette in her shopping-bag till she cor­ nered it, and gave up. From that moment I was a pet - a mamma's own wootsey squidlums. Say, gentle reader, did you ever have a 200-pound woman breathing a flavour of Camembert cheese and Peau d'Espagne pick you up and wallop her nose all over you, remarking all the time in an Emma Eames tone of voice: 'Oh, oo's um oodlum, doodlum, woodlum, toodlum, bitsy-witsy skoodlums?'From a pedigreed yellow pup I grew up to be an anonymous yellow cur looking like a cross between an Angora cat and a box of lemons. But my mistress never tumbled. She thought that the two primeval pups that Noah chased into the ark were but a collateral branch of my ancestors. It took two policemen to keep her from entering me at the Madison Square Garden for the Siberian bloodhound prize.I'll tell you about that flat. The house was the ordinary thing in New York, paved with Parian marble in the entrance hall and cobblestones above the first floor. Our flat was three fl - well, not flights - climbs up. My mistress rented it unfurnished, and put in the regular things - 1903 antique upholstered parlour set, oil chromo of geishas in a Harlem tea-house, rubber plant and husband.By Sirius! there was a biped I felt sorry for. He was a little man with sandy hair and whiskers a good deal like mine. Hen-pecked? - well, toucans and flamingoes and pelicans all had their bills in him. He wiped the dishes and listened to my mistress tell about the cheap, ragged things the lady with the squirrel-skin coat on the second floor hung out on her line to dry. And every evening while she was getting supper she made him take me out on the end of a string for a walk.

如果男人知道女人在独处时如何打发时间，他们就永远不会结婚。劳拉·李恩·吉比，花生糖，脖子上涂一点杏仁奶油，没洗的碗碟，与制冰工人聊半小时，翻阅一包旧信件，再加上一两根腌黄瓜和两瓶麦芽提取物，最后再偷偷瞄一眼对面的公寓——这大概就是全部了。在他下班前二十分钟，她会整理一下屋子，修整自己的发型，让它看起来不那么糟糕，然后拿出很多缝纫活儿做个十分钟的假装。

在那间公寓里，我过着狗的生活。几乎整天我都窝在角落里，看着那个胖女人消磨时间。我有时会睡觉，做些关于追猫进地下室、对着穿黑色手套的老太太吼叫的幻想，正如一只狗应该做的那样。可是她总会跳到我身边，用那些无厘头的贵宾犬式的言语把我亲得鼻子上沾满了唾沫——但我能怎么办呢？狗可不能咬丁香。

我开始为老公感到难过，如果我不这样，那简直是对我的猫的不忠。我们长得如此相似，以至于人们在我们出去的时候都会注意到这一点；所以我们绕着摩根的出租车行驶的街道漫步，爬上去年十二月留在路上的雪堆，在那些住着廉价人的地方。

一天晚上，当我们正在散步时，我努力表现得像一只名贵的圣伯纳犬，而老头则试图摆出一种不想杀了第一个听见门德尔松婚礼进行曲的磨坊主的样子，我抬头看着他，用我的方式说道：“你怎么一脸苦瓜相啊，你这个棕色毛绳的龙虾？她不吻你。你不用坐在她的腿上，听那些让音乐喜剧的书本听起来像是伊皮克泰图斯格言的对话。你应该感谢自己不是一只狗。振作起来，贝内迪克，告别忧郁。”

那位婚姻受挫的家伙低头看着我，脸上带着几分类似犬类的聪慧。“哦，小狗，”他说，“好狗。你简直看起来像是可以说话。怎么了，小狗——猫吗？”

猫！能够说话！

但当然，他无法理解。人类被剥夺了动物的语言。狗与人之间唯一能沟通的共同基础是在虚构的世界中。

在我们隔壁的公寓里住着一位女士，养了一只黑棕色的猎犬。她的丈夫每天晚上都要牵着它出去散步。

If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone they'd never marry. Laura Lean Jibbey, peanut brittle, a little almond cream on the neck muscles, dishes unwashed, half an hour's talk with the iceman, reading a package of old letters, a couple of pickles and two bottles of malt extract, one hour peeking through a hole in the window shade into the flat across the air- shaft - that's about all there is to it. Twenty minutes before time for him to come home from work she straightens up the house, fixes her rat so it won't show, and gets out a lot of sewing for a ten-minute bluff. I led a dog's life in that flat. 'Most all day I lay there in my corner watching the fat woman kill time. I slept sometimes and had pipe dreams about being out chasing cats into basements and growling at old ladies with black mittens, as a dog was intended to do. Then she would pounce upon me with a lot of that drivelling poodle palaver and kiss me on the nose - but what could I do? A dog can't chew cloves. I began to feel sorry for Hubby, dog my cats if I didn't. We looked so much alike that people noticed it when we went out; so we shook the streets that Morgan's cab drives down, and took to climbing the piles of last December's snow on the streets where cheap people live. One evening when we were thus promenading, and I was trying to look like a prize St. Bernard, and the old man was trying to look like he wouldn't have murdered the. first organ-grinder he heard play Mendelssohn's wedding-march, I looked up at him and said, in my way: 'What are you looking so sour about, you oakum trimmed lob­ ster? She don't kiss you. You don't have to sit on her lap and listen to talk that would make the book of a musical comedy sound like the maxims of Epictetus. You ought to be thankful you're not a dog. Brace up, Benedick, and bid the blues begone.' The matrimonial mishap looked down at me with almost canine intelligence in his face. 'Why, doggie,' says he, 'good doggie. You almost look like you could speak. What is it, doggie - Cats?' Cats! Could speak! But, of course, he couldn't understand. Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communica­ tion upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction. In the flat across the hall from us lived a lady with a black-and- tan terrier. Her husband strung it and took it out every evening,

但他总是欢天喜地地哼着小曲回家。有一天我在走廊里和那个黑棕色的猎犬碰了鼻子，于是向他请教。 “瞧，‘摇摆与跳跃’，”我说，“你知道一个真正的男人不会在公共场合给狗当保姆。我从没见过一个被牵着的狗，看上去不想舔每个看着他的男人。但你的主人每天都像个业余魔术师表演蛋的把戏一样精神抖擞。他是怎么做到的？别告诉我他喜欢这样。” “他？”黑棕色的猎犬说，“哦，他用的是大自然的良药。他喝得酩酊大醉。一开始我们出去时，他像个不愿意在赌船打牌的人。等到我们进了八家酒吧之后，他不在乎线上的东西是条狗还是一条鲶鱼。我为了躲避那些摇摆的门，尾巴已经少了两寸。” 那只小猎犬给我的启发让我开始思考。

一天晚上，大约六点钟，我的女主人命令他忙起来为“Lovey”搞些新鲜空气。我一直隐瞒，但这就是她对我的称呼。黑棕色的猎犬叫做“Tweetness”。就我个人而言，我觉得自己在某种程度上比他更强。但“Lovey”这个名字在自尊心上有点像挂在尾巴上的罐头。

在一条安全的街道上的一个安静的地方，我把守卫的绳子收紧，停在一家吸引人的高档酒吧前。我像一只狗一样直扑过去，呜咽着像新闻稿中报导的小女孩爱丽丝在小溪里采花时陷入泥潭的样子。

“哎呀，”老头子笑着说，“真是不可思议，那位香槟黄的苏打水儿子竟然邀请我进去喝一杯。让我看看——自从我把一只脚放在脚凳上节省鞋料以来，已经过了多久了？我想我会——”

我知道我抓住了机会。他坐下后点了一杯热苏格兰威士忌，坐在桌旁，整整一个小时不停地喝着。我就在他身旁，尾巴敲打着桌子，享受着免费的午餐，简直无可比拟，远超过妈妈在公寓里用八分钟之前在熟食店买来的自制零食。

当苏格兰的饮品全部喝光，只剩下几片黑麦面包时，老头子才把我从桌腿上解开，像渔夫钓鱼一样把我带到了外面。在外面，他脱掉了我的项圈，把它扔进了街上。“可怜的小狗，”他说，“好狗狗。她再也不会吻你了。真是太遗憾了。好狗狗，去吧，去被电车撞了，过得快乐。”

我拒绝离开。我兴奋地围着老头子的腿蹦来跳去，像个开心的小狗。

“你这只老跳蚤头的松鼠追逐者，”我对他说，“你这个月牙叫唤、指兔子、偷鸡蛋的老猎犬，你难道看不出我不想离开你吗？你难道看不出我们都是森林里的小狗，而太太正用菜巾追着你和我，用跳蚤药和粉红色的蝴蝶结绑着我的尾巴。为什么不把这一切都结束，永远做伙伴呢？”

也许你会说他听不懂——也许他真的不懂。但是他似乎明白了，抓住了那杯热苏格兰威士忌，停下来想了一下。

“小狗，”他说，最后说道，“我们在这个世界上仅有十几个生命，而且很少有人能活过三百岁。如果我再看到那间公寓，我就是个傻瓜，如果你再看到它，你就更傻；这可不是奉承。我敢打赌西方之星以达克斯猎犬的长度赢得比赛。”

没有绳子，但我跟着我的主人一路欢乐地走向二十三街渡轮。而路上的猫们则感激地感谢他们拥有了可灵活伸缩的爪子。

在新泽西那边，我的主人对一个正在吃葡萄干卷的陌生人说：“我和我的小狗，我们要去落基山脉

but he always came home cheerful and whistling. One day I touched noses with the black-and-tan in the hall, and I struck him for an elucidation. 'See, here, Wiggle-and-Skip,' I says, 'you know that it ain't the nature of a real man to play dry-nurse to a dog in public. I never saw one leashed to a bow-wow yet that didn't look like he'd like to lick every other man that looked at him. But your boss comes in every day as perky and set up as an amateur prestidigitator doing the egg trick. How does he do it? Don't tell me he likes it.' 'Him?' says the black-and-tan. 'Why, he uses Nature's Own Remedy. He gets spifflicated. At first when we go out he's as shy as the man on the steamer who would rather play pedro when they make 'em all jackpots. By the time we've been in eight saloons he don't care whether the thing on the end of his line is a dog or a catfish. I've lost two inches of my tail trying to sidestep those swinging doors.' The pointer I got from that terrier - vaudeville please copy - set me to thinking. One evening about six o'clock my mistress ordered him to get busy and do the ozone act for Lovey. I have concealed it until now, but that is what she called me. The black-and-tan was called 'Tweetness.' I consider that I have the bulge on him as far as you could chase a rabbit. Still 'Lovey' is something of a nomenclatural tin-can on the tail of one's self-respect. At a quiet place on a safe street I tightened the line of my custo­ dian in front of an attractive, refined saloon. I made a dead-ahead scramble for the doors, whining like a dog in the press despatches that lets the family know that little Alice is bogged while gathering lilies in the brook. 'Why, darn my eyes,' says the old man, with a grin; 'darn my eyes if the saffron-coloured son of a seltzer lemonade ain't asking me in to take a drink. Lemme see - how long's it been since I saved shoe leather by keeping one foot on the footrest? I believe I'll - ' I knew I had him. Hot Scotches he took, sitting at a table. For an hour he kept the Campbells coming. I sat by his side rapping for the waiter with my tail, and eating free lunch such as mamma in her flat never equalled with her homemade truck bought at a delicatessen store eight minutes before papa comes home. When the products of Scotland were all exhausted except the rye bread the old man unwound me from the table leg and played me outside like a fisherman plays a salmon. Out there he took off my collar and threw it into the street'Poor doggie,' says he; 'good doggie. She shan't kiss you any more. 'S a darned shame. Good doggie, go away and get run over by a street car and be happy.' I refused to leave. I leaped and frisked around the old man's legs happy as a pug on a rug. 'You old flea-headed woodchuck-chaser,' I said to him - 'you moon-baying, rabbit-pointing, egg-stealing old beagle, can't you see that I don't want to leave you? Can't you see that we're both Pups in the Wood and the missis is the cruel uncle after you with the dish towel and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie on my tail. Why not cut that all out and be pards for evermore?' Maybe you'll say h e didn't understand - maybe h e didn't. B u t he kind of got a grip on the Hot Scotches, and stood still for a minute, thinking. 'Doggie,' says he finally, 'we don't live more than a dozen lives on this earth, and very few of us live to be more than 300. If I ever see that flat any more I'm a flat, and if you do you're flatter; and that's no flattery. I'm offering 60 to 1 that Westward H o wins out by the length of a dachshund.' There was no string, but I frolicked along with my master to the Twenty-third Street ferry. And the cats on the route saw reason to give thanks that prehensile claws had been given them. On the Jersey side my master said to a stranger who stood eating a currant bun: 'Me and my doggie, we are bound for the Rocky Mountains.' But what pleased me most was when my old man pulled both of my ears until I howled, and said: 'Y ou common, monkey-headed, rat-tailed, sulphur-coloured son of a door-mat, do you know what I'm going to call you?' I thought of 'Lovey,' and I whined dolefully. 'I'm going to call you "Pete," ' says my master; and if I'd had five tails I couldn't have done enough wagging to do justice to the occasion.

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