Alice in wonderland

The enjoyable experience from doing a blog, is the interactivity between we deerhounds and their companions. For example, when we posted the Friday the 13th blog featuring a Landseer image plate, lifted from a 1891 book of childrens stories; we promptly received a scanned reproduction of the story which is reproduced above and included was the attached message . . .

Dear Rogue
I thought you might be interested with the enclosed from a book dated 1891 of childrens stories about some pictures after Landseer. Your BLOG pge still gives your two old aunts a great deal of happiness. Never forget we are so, so proud of you.
Your loving Aunts Flora and Betty.

For those who have yet to enjoy this sad little tale, find it transcribed below for your reading pleasure and thank Aunts Flora and Betty for sharing this.

Duke of Sutherland’s Children.

Why should the tall hound look sad and jealous because his fair young mistress twines a wreath of flowers for the fawn’s neck? She has patted his head all the way from the fine house on the other side of the Park, and often called him “good dog;” and now the tall hound does not like it, because the gentle fawn comes to be stroked and patted also.

Silly, selfish fellow! Why should he want all the love? What a pity that he cannot understand that his mistress does not love him less because she loves the fawn also.

The small dog at her feet is not so foolish. He watches with pleasure the lovely Alice wreathing the fawn’s neck. He stands up on his hind legs, begging her to add to the wreath the flower he holds between his white teeth. If he could speak he might perhaps say, “Let me be of some little use in the world to-day, let me help to make the fawn happy.”

Alice loves all her pets dearly, and she takes good care that no dumb creature she owns shall ever suffer from want of food. And she cares also for creatures better than these – the sick and the poor outside the Park gates. Ah! It is very seldom that a young girl or boy studies the wants of dumb animals, and is not also mindful of the need of human creatures.

The tall hound is cross as he leans against the trunk of the old oak, watching his mistress caress the fawn: but he is very happy when he walks in a stately way beside Alice and her young brother, carrying a basket in his mouth filled with nice things for the sick girl in the white cottage by the brook. When the cottage door opens, there is little Nelly propped up in a chair with pillows. She is very pale and thin, but her cheeks flush the colour of a rose as Alice and her young brother enter. She has a bad cough, which keeps her awake at night; and she is often thirsty. And with a bright light in her eyes she looks at the splendid purple grapes which Alice takes out of the basket; for she thinks how nice it will be to have them on the table beside her bed, to eat when her lips are dry. Nelly fades away day by day like a flower. Alice will not see her many more times smiling in her chair as she withers. The white blinds will soon be drawn down in the cottage windows, to tell that Nelly has gone to a world where “there shall be no more pain.” But Alice will smile through her tears when Nelly’s mother tells her she was her child’s best comfort.