o lodgings of her own; and there was Coolin in precisely the same
situation with any young gentleman who has had the inestimable benefit
of a faithful nurse. The canine conscience did not solve the problem
with a pound of tea at Christmas. No longer content to pay a flying
visit, it was the whole forenoon that he dedicated to his solitary
friend. And so, day by day, he continued to comfort her solitude until
(for some reason which I could never understand and cannot approve) he
was kept locked up to break him of the graceful habit. Here, it is not
the similarity, it is the difference, that is worthy of remark; the
clearly marked degrees of gratitude and the proportional duration of his
visits. Anything further removed from instinct it were hard to fancy;
and one is even stirred to a certain impatience with a character so
destitute of spontaneity, so passionless in justice, and so priggishly
obedient to the voice of reason.

There are not many dogs like this good Coolin, and not many people. But
the type is one well marked, both in the human and the canine family.
Gallantry was not his aim, but a solid and somewhat oppressive
respectability. He was a sworn foe to the unusual and the conspicuous, a
praiser of the golden mean, a kind of city uncle modified by Cheeryble.
And as he was precise and conscientious in all the steps of his own
blameless course, he looked for the same precision and an even greater
gravity in the bearing of his deity, my father. It was no sinecure to be
Coolin's idol: he was exacting like a rigid parent; and at every sign of
levity in the man whom he respected, he announced loudly the death of
virtue and the proximate fall of the pillars of the earth.

I have called him a snob; but all dogs are so, though in varying
degrees. It is hard to follow their snobbery among themselves; for
though I think we can perceive distinctions of rank, we cannot grasp
what is the criterion. Thus in Edinburgh, in a good part of the town,
there were several distinct societies or clubs that met in the morning
to--the phrase is technical--to "rake the backets" in a troop. A friend
of mine, the master of three dogs, was one day surprised to observe that
they had left one club and joined another; but whether it was a rise or
a fall, and the result of an invitation or an expulsion, was more than
he could guess. And this illustrates pointedly our ignorance of the real
life of dogs, their social ambitions and their social hie