d a Boys' Dog lurking on the
corner. When I read the advertisements of lost children, I always add
mentally to the description, "was last seen in company with a Boys'
Dog." Nor is his influence wholly confined to small boys. I have seen
him waiting patiently for larger boys on the way to school, and by
artful and sophistical practices inducing them to play truant. I have
seen him lying at the school-house door, with the intention of enticing
the children on their way home to distant and remote localities. He has
led many an unsuspecting boy to the wharves and quays by assuming the
character of a water-dog, which he was not, and again has induced others
to go with him on a gunning excursion by pretending to be a sporting
dog, in which quality he was knowingly deficient. Unscrupulous,
hypocritical, and deceitful, he has won many children's hearts by
answering to any name they might call him, attaching himself to their
persons until they got into trouble, and deserting them at the very
moment they most needed his assistance. I have seen him rob small
school-boys of their dinners by pretending to knock them down by
accident; and have seen larger boys in turn dispossess him of his
ill-gotten booty for their own private gratification. From being a
tool, he has grown to be an accomplice; through much imposition, he
has learned to impose on others; in his best character, he is simply a
vagabond's vagabond.

I could find it in my heart to pity him, as he lies there through the
long summer afternoon, enjoying brief intervals of tranquillity and
rest which he surreptitiously snatches from a stranger's doorstep. For
a shrill whistle is heard in the streets, the boys are coming home from
school, and he is startled from his dreams by a deftly thrown potato,
which hits him on the head, and awakens him to the stern reality that he
is now and forever--a Boys' Dog.

CHARITABLE REMINISCENCES

As the new Benevolent Association has had the effect of withdrawing
beggars from the streets, and as Professional Mendicancy bids fair to
be presently ranked with the Lost Arts, to preserve some records of this
noble branch of industry, I have endeavored to recall certain traits and
peculiarities of individual members of the order whom I have known,
and whose forms I now miss from their accustomed haunts. In so doing,
I confess to feeling a certain regret at this decay of Professional
Begging, for I hold the theory that mankind are bettere