nced me that it is worse than cruel to
treat a dog ill--it is most ungrateful. It does sometimes happen that a
dog has a bad and violent temper, even from a puppy; and if very careful
treatment does not soon cure this, I should say that such a dog ought to
be destroyed, by a quick and easy death; not making the poor brute
suffer for what it cannot help. But in ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred, a dog's savageness is the fault of those who have brought him
up: and few things are more wicked than to teach or encourage a dog to
fight his own race, or to bark and fly at human beings. When the world
was as God made it, there was no hatred in it, no quarrelling, no wish
in any living creature to frighten or hurt any other living creatures;
but when Adam became a sinner, his sin broke through all this beautiful
order, and peace, and love, and set the animals against each other, and
against himself. I am trying always to remember this; for when they
alarm or distress me, and I am thinking to punish them, I ought not to
forget what first made the brutes vicious, and brought so much suffering
on them. It was man's sin alone: man should therefore do the best he can
to make them amends; and not increase their misery, as he often does, by
cruel severity. I think you will agree with me in this. Besides, it is a
certain truth, that God's eye is upon us and on the animals about us,
as much as it was on Adam and the living creatures that came to him to
be named; and though we and they are much changed for the worse, yet the
Lord God never does or can change. He is as righteous, as holy, as
merciful, and as just to-day, as he was then. How often has Jack, when
he saw a thoughtless boy hurting a dog, or any other animal, gone up to
him, and said, on his fingers, in a very quiet, gentle, but earnest
manner, "God see--God angry." He felt much for the dumb beast, suffering
pain; but more for the boy who was forgetting that the Lord's hand would
yet punish him, when he least expected it: for Jack very well knew that
the Bible says, "He shall have judgment without mercy that hath showed
no mercy."

Dogs have been a great amusement to me ever since I was a baby; and I
never have been without one in the house when I could keep one. Ladies
and gentlemen are not often willing to let their carpets be soiled by
dogs; but the poor people, who are not troubled with carpets, make
companions of them. I am writing this book in a room with a carpet and
g