reeds than for so many windle-straes,
and, fast as a sea-serpent, is among the heart of the killed and
wounded. In unerring instinct he always seizes the dead--and now a
devil's dozen lie along the shore. Come hither, O'Bronte, and caress thy
old master. Ay--that showed a fine feeling--did that long shake that
bedrizzled the sunshine. Put thy paws over our shoulders, and round our
neck, true son of thy sire--oh! that he were but alive, to see and share
thy achievements: but indeed, two such dogs, living together in their
prime at one era, would have been too great glory for this sublunary
canine world. Therefore Sirius looked on thy sire with an evil eye, and
in jealousy--

"Tantaene animis caelestibus irae!"

growled upon some sinner to poison the Dog of all Dogs, who leapt up
almost to the ceiling of the room where he slept--our own bedroom--under
the agony of that accursed arsenic, gave one horrid howl, and expired.
Methinka we know his murderer--his eye falls when it meets ours on the
Street of Princes; and let him scowl there but seldom--for though 'tis
but suspicion, this fist, O'Bronte, doubles at the sight of the
miscreant--and some day, impelled by wrath and disgust, it will smash
his nose flat with the other features, till his face is a pancake. Yea!
as sure as Themis holds her balance in the skies, shall the poisoner be
punished out of all recognition by his parents, and be disowned by the
Irish Cockney father that begot him, and the Scotch Cockney mother that
bore him, as he carries home a tripe-like countenance enough to make his
paramour the scullion miscarry, as she opens the door to him on the
fifth flat of a common stair. But we are getting personal, O'Bronte, a
vice abhorrent from our nature.

There goes our Crutch, Hamish, whirling aloft in the sky like a rainbow
flight, even like the ten-pound hammer from the fling of George Scougal
at the St Ronans games. Our gout is gone--so is our asthma--eke our
rheumatism--and, like an eagle, we have renewed our youth. There is hop,
step, and jump, for you, Hamish--we should not fear, young and agile as
you are, buck, to give you a yard. But now for the flappers. Pointers
all, stir your stumps and into the water. This is rich. Why, the reeds
are as full of flappers as of frogs. If they can fly, the fools don't
know it. Why, there is a whole musquito-fleet of yellow boys, not a
month old. What a prolific old lady must she have been, to have kept on
breedi