The Dogs of Boytown

“Clothes do not make the man, and boys are apt to overlook certain superficial peculiarities and defects which seem more significant to their elders. In Sam Bumpus they saw only a man of good humor and wonderful wisdom, a man whose manner of life was vastly more interesting than that of the common run of people, whose knowledge of the lore of woods and fields, of dogs and hunting, entitled him to a high place in their estimation. They overlooked the externals, the evidence of poverty and shiftlessness, his lack of education, and saw only his native wit and shrewdness, his kinship with the world of nature, and his goodness of heart.””

— Walter A. Dyer

“Setters,” he was saying, “are usually supposed to be the keenest and pointers the strongest, but in my opinion it all depends on the partic’lar dog. Nowadays I hear a good deal about the pointer bein’ the best dog, and I’ve owned some good ones myself. There’s nothing prettier than strong, wiry pointer doublin’ and turnin’ in the brush and freezin’ to a steady point. But for my own part, give me a well-bred Llewellyn setter; they’re the humanist dog they is. They’ve got the bird sense, too. Oh, you can’t beat ‘em.””

— Walter A. Dyer

“Say,” he said, “I’ll tell you a secret. I s’pose I’ve shot more birds and rabbits than any man in this county, if I do say it, and I never bring down a partridge or kill a chicken that I don’t feel sorry for it. I ain’t never got over it and I guess I never shall. But it’s only thing old Sam Bumpus is good for, I reckon, and it has to be done. Folks has to eat and I have to make a livin’. I don’t do it for fun, though I don’t know any finer thing in this world than trampin’ off ‘cross country with a gun and a good dog on a fine mornin’.””

— Walter A. Dyer