DANDY JIM, the richest dog in the world, is dead. If it had not been for the legacy his former mistress left him, Dandy Jim might be alive to-day. A veterinary surgeon and a regular hospital doctor treated him unsuccessfully. He had fatty degeneration of the vital organs. A stroke of apoplexy was the immediate cause of his demise.
During his lifetime Dandy Jim wore diamonds. He ate candy every day that cost eighty cents a pound. A coachman took him driving in the park sunny afternoons. He had no cares and nothing to work for. His food came without effort and he was pampered, coddled, and killed thereby.
The idea of leaving a $10,000 legacy to a spaniel would seem ridiculous to most people, but it was as natural for the aged spinster whose companion Dandy Jim was, to provide a life of ease for him as for the ordinary millionaire to provide a life of ease for his son.
And it was much less foolish.
Whether a dog is pampered to death makes little difference. Steers are fattened on purpose to make their meat tender. Geese are forced to become fat against their will in order that their diseased livers may make pate de foie gras. Capons sell at a higher price than roosters because they take on more fat. The fattening of the lower animals for the sustenance and the taste of man is quite a common thing.
If it were any satisfaction to Miss Ellen Ann Griffin to know that her pet dog would always be fat and never go hungry, she had the right to use her money for that purpose.
But it is no way to treat boys and girls or men and women. The most cruel thing that a father can do to his children is to arrange by his will that their individual initiative is destroyed, their ambitions stifled, their natural efforts for self-success obviated and their lives made like that of Dandy Jim, who dined every day at a fashionable restaurant, wore jewels which cost him nothing, had a solid gold collar, liveried servants and attendants—and fatty degeneration.
The reason that so many children of rich men—especially so many rich men's sons—turn out bad is because they have not had an even chance.
If the owner of a railroad would treat his son the way a track-walker has to treat his boy, there would be fewer railroad magnates sorrowed by their offspring's disgrace. If the boy was sent to the public school, if he had to earn any excess spending money, if his clothes had to last him until his father's old suit was made over, if he had to work or go hungry, there would be fewer rich men spending their old age in saddened solitude.
A girl can stand more petting and pampering than a boy. Hard knocks are not as necessary to get common sense into her head as into a boy's. Sheltering care is a good thing for her, but that is no more reason for leaving an immense fortune to her trust than it is for sending a boy to college with $1,000 a month allowance and then finding fault with him because he spends it on chorus girls.
Dandy Jim's fate can teach much to human beings.—The World.