ood _dog_
in the proverb. The good things of life are not to be had singly, but
come to us with a mixture; like a schoolboy's holiday, with a task
affixed to the tail of it. What a delightful companion is ****, if he
did not always bring his tall cousin with him! He seems to grow with
him; like some of those double births, which we remember to have read
of with such wonder and delight in the old "Athenian Oracle," where
Swift commenced author by writing Pindaric Odes (what a beginning for
him!) upon Sir William Temple. There is the picture of the brother,
with the little brother peeping out at his shoulder; a species of
fraternity, which we have no name of kin close enough to comprehend.
When **** comes, poking in his head and shoulders into your room,
as if to feel his entry, you think, surely you have now got him to
yourself--what a three hours' chat we shall have!--but, ever in the
haunch of him, and before his diffident body is well disclosed in your
apartment, appears the haunting shadow of the cousin, over-peering his
modest kinsman, and sure to over-lay the expected good talk with his
insufferable procerity of stature, and uncorresponding dwarfishness of
observation. Misfortunes seldom come alone. 'Tis hard when a blessing
comes accompanied. Cannot we like Sempronia, without sitting down to
chess with her eternal brother? or know Sulpicia, without knowing all
the round of her card-playing relations? must my friend's brethren
of necessity be mine also? must we be hand and glove with Dick Selby
the parson, or Jack Selby the calico printer, because W.S., who is
neither, but a ripe wit and a critic, has the misfortune to claim a
common parentage with them? Let him lay down his brothers; and 'tis
odds but we will cast him in a pair of ours (we have a superflux) to
balance the concession. Let F.H. lay down his garrulous uncle; and
Honorius dismiss his vapid wife, and superfluous establishment of six
boys--things between boy and manhood--too ripe for play, too raw for
conversation--that come in, impudently staring their father's old
friend out of countenance; and will neither aid, nor let alone, the
conference: that we may once more meet upon equal terms, as we were
wont to do in the disengaged state of bachelorhood.

It is well if your friend, or mistress, be content with these
canicular probations. Few young ladies but in this sense keep a dog.
But when Rutilia hounds at you her tiger aunt; or Ruspina expects you
to