ealise that a halfpenny will buy not merely one thing
but several things--in fact, that the great advantage of exchange by
currency over barter is that it gives you a choice. While on the subject
of purchasing dogs, it is curious to reflect how very little is wanted
to convert the dog that is able to purchase into a free agent. If a dog
can exchange his faculty for cigar carrying or his tricks against
half-pence, why should he not exchange useful services, such as guarding
a house or herding sheep, and so become self-supporting? Imagine a
collie paid by the day, and, when his work was over, receiving twopence
and going off to buy his supper. But the vista opened is too
far-reaching. One sees down it dogs paid by the hour and by the piece,
and then dogs asking for better pay and shorter hours, and, finally,
dogs on strike, and dog "black-legs," or "free dogs."

II.

A word should be said as to the authenticity of the stories in the
present volume. It is a matter of common form for the evening newspapers
to talk of the _Spectator_ dog stories as hoaxes, and to refer in their
playful, way to "another _Spectator_ dog." It might not then unnaturally
have been supposed that a person undertaking to edit and reprint these
stories would have found a considerable number that showed signs of
being hoaxes. I may confess, indeed, that I set out with the notion of
forming a sort of Appendix to the present work, which should be headed
"Ben Trovato," in which should be inserted stories which were too
curious and amusing to be left out altogether, but which, on the other
hand, were what the Americans call a little "too tall" to be accepted as
genuine. The result of my plan was unexpected. Though I found many
stories in which the inferences seemed strained or mistaken, and others
which contained indications of exaggeration, I could find but two
stories which could reasonably be declared as only suitable for a "Ben
Trovato." I therefore suppressed my heading. The truth is that the
animal stories are much more carefully sifted at the _Spectator_ office
than our witty critics and contemporaries will admit. No stories are
ever published unless the names and addresses of the writers are
supplied, and all stories are rejected which have anything clearly
suspicious about them. What the editors of the _Spectator_ do not do is
to reject a dog-story because it states that a dog has been observed to
do something which has never been reported as