Beautiful Joe [0]
Beautiful Joe
by Marshall Saunders
Beautiful Joe an Autobiography
By Marshall Saunders
With an Introduction
By Hezekiah Butterworth
Of Youth's Companion
Philadelphia
To
George Thorndike Angell
President of the American Humane Education Society
The Massachusetts Society for the Prevention
Of Cruelty to Animals, and the Parent
American Band of Mercy
19 Milk St., Boston.
This Book Is Respectfully Dedicated
By the Author
PREFACE
BEAUTIFUL JOE is a real dog, and "Beautiful Joe" is his real name. He belonged
during the first part of his life to a cruel master, who mutilated him in the
manner described in the story. He was rescued from him, and is now living in a
happy home with pleasant surroundings, and enjoys a wide local celebrity.
The character of Laura is drawn from life, and to the smallest detail is
truthfully depicted. The Morris family has its counterparts in real life, and
nearly all of the incidents of the story are founded on fact.
THE AUTHOR.
INTRODUCTION
The wonderfully successful book, entitled "Black Beauty," came like a living
voice out of the animal kingdom. But it spake for the horse, and made other
books necessary; it led the way. After the ready welcome that it received, and
the good it has accomplished and is doing, it follows naturally that some one
should be inspired to write a book to interpret the life of a dog to the humane
feeling of the world. Such a story we have in "Beautiful Joe."
The story speaks not for the dog alone, but for the whole animal kingdom.
Through it we enter the animal world, and are made to see as animals see, and to
feel as animals feel. The sympathetic sight of the author, in this
interpretation, is ethically the strong feature of the book.
Such books as this is one of the needs of our progressive system of education.
The day-school, the Sunday-school, and all libraries for the young, demand the
influence that shall teach the reader how to live in sympathy with the animal
world; how to understand the languages of the creatures that we have long been
accustomed to call "dumb," and the sign language of the lower orders of these
dependent beings. The church owes it to her mission to preach and to teach the
enforcement of the "bird's nest commandment;" the principle recognized by Moses
in the Hebrew world, and echoed by Cowper in English poetry, and Burns in the
"Meadow Mouse," and by our own Longfellow in songs of many keys.
Kindness to the animal kingdom is the first, or a first principle in the growth
of true philanthropy. Young Lincoln once waded across a half-frozen river to
rescue a dog, and stopped in a walk with a statesman to put back a bird that had
fallen out of its nest. Such a heart was trained to be a leader of men, and to
be crucified for a cause. The conscience that runs to the call of an animal in
distress is girding itself with power to do manly work in the world.
The story of "Beautiful Joe" awakens an intense interest, and sustains it
through a series of vivid incidents and episodes, each of which is a lesson. The
story merits the widest circulation, and the universal reading and response
accorded to "Black Beauty." To circulate it is to do good, to help the human
heart as well as the creatures of quick feelings and simple language.
When, as one of the committee to examine the manuscripts offered for prizes to
the Humane Society, I read the story, I felt that the writer had a higher motive
than to compete for a prize; that the story was a stream of sympathy that flowed
from the heart; that it was genuine; that it only needed a publisher who should
be able to command a wide influence, to make its merits known, to give it a
strong educational mission.
I am pleased that the manuscript has found such a publisher, and am sure that
the issue of the story will honor the Publication Society. In the development of
the book, I believe that the humane cause has stood above any speculative
thought or interest. The book