Dear old Rollo

"Henry Chapman Mercer" (i.e. The Mercer Museum and Fonthill) posted this yesterday on Facebook. It made me make that "Aww!" sound that girls make when then see kittens. Except it was sad.

April 30, 1916, about 1:00 pm

Dear old Rollo died under the cherry tree in front of Fonthill.

He had been suffering with a wasting distemper for about two months. Thank heaven that it was permitted me to poorly appreciate his intense and boundless love for me – and that I petted him more as his beauty faded and his strength failed in paralysis and his loving eyes lost their sight – that we lifted him into the back for daily trips to the historical society – and that I never failed to answer when he called and often brought back the old smile upon his devoted face. May his footsteps outlast many generations of men on his stairways at Fonthill and the Bucks County Historical Society.

Shall we who know that in about 300 years such love as this sprung, for Rollo, out of the ancestral heart of the ferocious wolf, doubt that the hand of a loving father wrought the wonderful change? Dare we assert that the divine evolution of LOVE stopped here, and deny for Rollo the life beyond the grave which we claim for ourselves?

The cherry blossoms were not yet out on that sad day. May I meet you again where they are in full bloom, dear Old Boy!

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Let's all go over to Fonthill and put our human paws over one of the paw prints Rollo left in the cement there.