Tárogató, 1948-1949 (11. évfolyam, 1-8. szám)
1949-02-01 / 8. szám
14 TÁROGATÓ will be good for much thereafter. Seldom does a vice or virtue have a single root. On the one hand, the gambler gives up rational modes of guidance, ceases to calculate clearly, lives on the unexpected, and looks for some deliverance to drop from the sky... Gambling, in contrast with honest trade, admits only a single gain. I can gain nothing for myself except by damaging another. I must directly seek his harm. The tradesman benefits himself through benefiting his customer. His business is grounded on the double gain. He draws profit, it is true, from another man’s pocket, but he does not, like the gambler, stop there. He puts back into that pocket a little more than he took out. The gambler breaks up this mutuality, and lives, as a bandit, by attack.” The Humility of the Wise On the title page of A Treatise of Knowledge and Love Compared, the author described himself in these modest terms: By Richard Baxter, who, by God’s blessing on long and hard studies, hath learned to know that he knoweth but little, to suspend his judgment of uncertainties, and to take great, necessary, certain things for the food of his faith and comforts, and the measure of his church communion. TALES OF REAL DOGS By Albert Payson Terhune The Dog Who Won His Fare Home Ballerat was a rough sheepdog, owned by an Austrailian rancher named Hardin, and trained to herd his master’s cattle and sheep. In addition to this, he was his master’s companion everywhere the ranchman happened to travel. Every week Hardin had to leave his ranch and make a business trip to a town some miles distant. Between the ranch and the town was a broad and deep and swift river. This river was crossed by means of a ferry-boat which plied back and forth every hour. The fare was one penny (two cents in Canadian money.) Ä hundred times Ballerat had seen his master take a penny from his pocket and pay it to the ferryman. But the dog had given no sign of noticing the transaction. Nobody would have guessed that Ballerat had the reasoning power to connect this payment with the right to board the ferry-boat. But he had, as you shall see. Now, what follows might have been less remarkable —though it would have been worth the telling — if Ballerat had been one of the many trained dogs that are taught to carry a coin to a shop or to a newsstand and to receive a parcel or a paper in exchange for it. But he had had no such training or experience. He was simply a sheepdog and his owner’s pal. Anything he knew, beyond that, was learned by him without human teaching. Once on a trip to town, Hardin and Ballerat became separated in the marketday crowds. After hunting in vain for his dog, the rancher went back home, to leave there the goods he had bought. He intended to come back the same afternoon to renew his search for his canine chum. But he was detained by ranch business and decided to postpone the trip until the next day. Meanwhile, Ballerat had been searching quite as eagerly for Hardin as Hardin had searched for him. Through the jostling crowds he made his way, sniffing and peering in every direction. Then he made a round of the places which Hardin was in the habit of visiting on his trips to town. But he drew a blank. There was no sign of Hardin. The dog realized at last that his master had gone; and, presumably, had gone home as usual. So he trotted homeward along the road that was so familiar to him. As it was long before the days when recklessly-driven motor-cars made road travel such a murderous risk for dogs, Ballerat made the journey with safety, until he came to the river, which chanced to be swollen by a long season of rain. There the dog stopped. The surging stretch of water lay between him and the ranch. Ordinarily he would have had no great difficulty in swimming the stream, wide as it was. But today it was a torrent.
