d been worked out in all the "history
of civilization," for verily "the trail of the serpent is over it
still."

Few persons realize the comparative un-worth of the dog. There is even a
hazy notion in most minds that he is to be classed with the horse, the
cow, the sheep, and the gentle swine, that he is entitled to lift up his
voice with the morn-saluting cock, or to roam with the mouse-disturbing
cat, or with that patient pair, the harnessed billy- and the lactiferous
nanny-goat.[A] Hence an enormous revenue is required for his support.
For example, we are told that "the dogs in Iowa eat enough annually to
feed a hundred thousand workmen, and cost the State nine million
dollars, or double the education of all its children." I should like to
know how many of these costly and pampered creatures earn their salt.
They toil not, they spin not, they contribute neither food nor wool nor
"power." There are extreme cases where they have proved serviceable for
defence and special purposes. The Laplanders are forced to make shift
with them in default of better draught-animals. There was a time when
the dogs of St. Bernard were a great convenience to the philanthropic
monks,--who, by the way, never received one-hundredth part of the credit
which has been lavished by the sentimentalists upon their half-automaton
assistants. The slave-hunters have found the race still more serviceable
for their ends. On great moors and lonely mountains and in the
exigencies of frontier-life, the shepherd, the hunter, and the pioneer
have turned them to account.

Far be it from me to disparage their assistance in these exceptional
instances and in others which might be named. The dog, like the bull or
the frogs of Egypt, is good in his place. But it does not follow that we
should have a bull in every door-yard, nor that it was an advantage to
the land of Egypt to be covered with frogs in-doors and out. The notion
that a dog is needful for defence in settled, civilized communities is
on a par with the delusion that a man is safer for carrying a loaded
pistol, more harm being done to honest people, and even to those of them
who resort to fire-arms, than to their enemies. One needs only to
consider the dogs of one's own neighborhood and compare the number of
burglars they have routed with the number of children or innocent
passers-by they have scared or bitten. My experience convinces me that
more houses and hen roosts are robbed where there are dogs