My Dog Dick, My Last Friend
De Amicis
Translated by J. G. Lista
Come. Here I am, sitting in the arm-chair, at your service. Come here and take a nap on my lap just as you do every day.
Would I have dreamed a year ago, that I should get into the habit of taking an afternoon nap with a dog?
For it is now just a year since my little son brought him home wrapped in the half of a newspaper like a roasted pigeon and placed him on the floor where he made me laugh again for the first time in years by taking a frog-like posture, waddling on his hind legs spread wide apart, white and round like a ball of cotton. Poor Dick He was taken away from his mother and brothers when scarcely weaned and brought to this house which had been stricken by misfortune. But it seemed that he quickly understood why we took him and what we expected from him.
He did not allow himself to be alarmed at being in a stranger's house. He did not com-
