new york state, 1913: a dog's prayer

We are the little brothers, homeless in cold and heat;
Four-footed little beggars, roaming the city street;
Snatching a bone from the gutter, creeping through alleys drear,
Stoned and sworn at and beaten, our hearts consumed with fear.
Is your heart too hard to listen to a starving puppy's cries?
Or too gay for the patient pleading in a dog's beseeching eyes?
Behold us, your little brothers, starved, beaten, oppressed;
Stretch out a band to help us, that we may have food and rest.

-- No kidding, this is from the Documents of the Senate of New York, Vol. 29 (1913), p. 89, regarding requested aid for a Humane Society Shelter.