rarchies. At
least, in their dealings with men they are not only conscious of sex,
but of the difference of station. And that in the most snobbish manner;
for the poor man's dog is not offended by the notice of the rich, and
keeps all his ugly feeling for those poorer or more ragged than his
master. And again, for every station they have an ideal of behaviour, to
which the master, under pain of derogation, will do wisely to conform.
How often has not a cold glance of an eye informed me that my dog was
disappointed; and how much more gladly would he not have taken a beating
than to be thus wounded in the seat of piety!

I knew one disrespectable dog. He was far liker a cat; cared little or
nothing for men, with whom he merely co-existed as we do with cattle,
and was entirely devoted to the art of poaching. A house would not hold
him, and to live in a town was what he refused. He led, I believe, a
life of troubled but genuine pleasure, and perished beyond all question
in a trap. But this was an exception, a marked reversion to the
ancestral type; like the hairy human infant. The true dog of the
nineteenth century, to judge by the remainder of my fairly large
acquaintance, is in love with respectability. A street-dog was once
adopted by a lady. While still an Arab, he had done as Arabs do,
gambolling in the mud, charging into butchers' stalls, a cat-hunter, a
sturdy beggar, a common rogue and vagabond; but with his rise into
society he laid aside these inconsistent pleasures. He stole no more, he
hunted no more cats; and, conscious of his collar, he ignored his old
companions. Yet the canine upper class was never brought to recognise
the upstart, and from that hour, except for human countenance, he was
alone. Friendless, shorn of his sports and the habits of a lifetime, he
still lived in a glory of happiness, content with his acquired
respectability, and with no care but to support it solemnly. Are we to
condemn or praise this self-made dog? We praise his human brother. And
thus to conquer vicious habits is as rare with dogs as with men. With
the more part, for all their scruple-mongering and moral thought, the
vices that are born with them remain invincible throughout; and they
live all their years, glorying in their virtues, but still the slaves of
their defects. Thus the sage Coolin was a thief to the last; among a
thousand peccadilloes, a whole goose and a whole cold leg of mutton lay
upon his conscience; but Woggs,[15