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Animal Rights History Timeline » [1901-1945] 20thc-Modernism » Mark Twain

Mark Twain

A Dog's Tale

[1903] Mark Twain, A Dog's Tale [First published in Harper's Monthly Magazine (New York, 1900-1913) (1903 Christmas); First Separate Edition: London: Anti-Vivisection Society, 1903] (New York & London, 1904).

The laboratory was not a book, or a picture, or a place to wash your hands in, as the college president's dog said—no, that is the lavatory; the laboratory is quite different, and is filled with jars, and bottles, and electrics, and wires, and strange machines; and every week other scientists came there and sat in the place, and used the machines, and discussed, and made what they called experiments and discoveries.…

…They discussed optics, as they called it, and whether a certain injury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could not agree about it, and said they must test it by experiment.…

…Suddenly the puppy shrieked and they set him on the floor, and he went staggering around, with his head all bloody…I ran at once to my little darling, and snuggled close to it where it lay, and licked the blood, and it put its head against mine, whimpering softly, and I knew in my heart it was a comfort to it in its pain and trouble to feel its mother's touch, though it could not see me. Then it dropped down, presently, and its little velvet nose rested upon the floor, and it was still, and did not move any more.