Travels with a Donkey by Robert Louis Stevenson

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Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes was first published in 1879.  It is Stevenson's account of a twelve day journey he undertook in 1878 through the mountainous and isolated Cévennes region of France.

Stevenson purchases an ill-used donkey called Modestine to be his pack-animal, and he needs a beast of burden because he has a cumbersome sleeping bag of unwieldy proportions that he designed himself.  Modestine, it turns out, has a personality of her own, and Stevenson not only has to deal with the weather, the terrain, the baggage and the locals, he also has a fickle donkey on his hands.  It promises to be an interesting twelve days.

Stevenson knows how to spin a yarn.  He mixes beautiful descriptions of man and nature into his narrative and adds the odd soliloquy here and there about life, the universe and everything.  The following is one of his more inspired passages:

In this world of imperfection we gladly welcome even partial intimacies.  And if we find but one to whom we can speak out of our heart freely, with whom we can walk in love and simplicity without dissimulation, we have no ground of quarrel with the world or God.

The latter part of the book concentrates heavily on the history of the region, which was and is a protestant stronghold in France.  Stevenson goes into a bit of depth as he recounts the villainy and demise of the leader of the Inquisition in that part of the world.  It is the story of a man who, after being rescued from death by the kindness of strangers, makes a career of persecuting his fellow humans, even unto their death.

And throughout it all there is Stevenson's struggles with Modestine, and poor Modestine does suffer for it more than he.  Perhaps folk in the nineteenth century were not as sentimental about animals as we may be today.  Modestine is sold as easily as she was bought, but her absence stings Stevenson and he reviews his feelings:

...I became aware of my bereavement.  I had lost Modestine.  Up to that moment I had thought I hated her; but now she was gone, "and, oh! the difference to me!" ... She was patient, elegant in form, the colour of an ideal mouse and inimitably small.  Her faults were those of her race and sex; her virtues were her own.  Father Adam wept when he sold her to me; after I had sold her in my turn, I was tempted to follow his example; and being alone with a stage-driver and four or five agreeable young men, I did not hesitate to yield to my emotion.

Yes, perhaps there is hope for the boy after all.  You may like to read this book if you are interested in seeing the early work of a master story-teller.  Parts of it are rough and callow, but the kernels of talent are there in abundance.  Just be warned that the attitude towards animals was not the same then as it seems to be now (at least in my part of the world).