always go on foot? We cannot credit the very
sweeping assertion, that multitudes of men, women, and children have
died in consequence of being bitten by dogs. Even the newspapers do not
run up the amount above a dozen per annum, from which you may safely
deduct two-thirds. Now, four men, women, and children, are not "a
multitude." Of those four, we may set down two as problematical--having
died, it is true, _in_, but not _of_ hydrophobia--states of mind and
body wide as the poles asunder. He who drinks two bottles of pure
spirit every day he buttons and unbuttons his breeches, generally dies
_in_ a state of hydrophobia--for he abhorred water, and knew
instinctively the jug containing that insipid element. But he never dies
at all _of_ hydrophobia, there being evidence to prove that for twenty
years he had drank nothing but brandy. Suppose we are driven to confess
the other two--why, one of them was an old woman of eighty, who was
dying as fast as she could hobble, at the very time she thought herself
bitten--and the other a nine-year-old brat, in hooping-cough and
measles, who, had there not been such a quadruped as a dog created,
would have worried itself to death before evening, so lamentably had its
education been neglected, and so dangerous an accomplishment is an
impish temper. The twelve cases for the year of that most horrible
disease, hydrophobia, have, we flatter ourselves, been satisfactorily
disposed of--eight of the alleged deceased being at this moment engaged
at various handicrafts, on low wages indeed, but still such as enable
the industrious to live--two having died of drinking--one of extreme old
age, and one of a complication of complaints incident to childhood,
their violence having, in this particular instance, been aggravated by
neglect and devilish temper. Where now the "multitude" of men, women,
and children, who have died in consequence of being bitten by mad dogs?

Gentle reader--a mad dog is a bugbear; we have walked many hundred times
the diameter and the circumference of this our habitable globe--along
all roads, public and private--with stiles or turnpikes--metropolitan
streets and suburban paths--and at all seasons of the revolving year and
day; but never, as we padded the hoof along, met we nor were over-taken
by greyhound, mastiff, or cur, in a state of hydrophobia. We have many
million times seen them with their tongues lolling out about a
yard--their sides panting--flag struck--and the