on my way to a dry-goods store to match him for
half a yard more of material."

Ladies will pay as much as ten dollars a week for the board of a poodle
in summer. And here is a specimen order at the inn wherein his puppyship
is taking his ease:

"Room No. 122.--To the clerk of ---- Hotel: Please send to my room, for
the use of my little pet 'Watch,' a choice porter-house steak, cooked
rare, and two chicken-wings, and charge to account of Mrs. ----."

But it is not always practicable to take our "dumb companions" with us
in our travels. Accordingly, the following advertisement is said to have
been recently inserted in the papers:

"Wanted, by a lady, a careful man to look after the house and be company
for her dog during her absence in Europe."

I myself lately witnessed a suggestive scene in a drawing-room car at
the Grand Central Depot. A portly old gentleman of opulent appearance
was stepping aboard with his daughter (or wife?), a fine specimen of
Amazonian beauty, accompanied by a third member of the family, a yellow
and dirty-looking little pug with its hair in its eyes. But, alas! the
latter was arrested at the platform, according to rule, and was being
conveyed to the baggage-car. I have no power to picture the blazing
indignation of his devoted mistress, or the eloquent storm with which
she assailed the officials, or the undignified haste and distress of
mind into which the old gentleman was thrown in his part of negotiator
between the contending parties. The lady was inconsolable and
inexorable. She would not go without her beloved. She would _never_
subject him to the discomfort and indignity of the baggage-car. She
would "rather ride in the common car" herself. How the case was settled
I did not see. She left the hateful drawing-room car with her packages
and her papa(?). Whether she abandoned her tour, or went into the
baggage-car to share the shame and sorrow of her poodle, or whether a
compromise was effected in favor of the "common car," I never
ascertained, I trust she was not the lady of Baltimore who last summer
went insane and tried to kill herself on account of the death of her pet
dog.

And this leads me to make a point in favor of dogs, at least so far as
their claim to being "so human" is concerned. There has been supposed to
be nothing more distinctive of human nature than its propensity to
suicide, arising from its capacity, as it rises in civilization and
enlightenment, of finding out th