so sweet to
have some neighbor's watch-dog keeping up a dishonest bark at everything
and nothing half through the night. As to the moral quality of the
noise, the only honest bark is that of the mosquito, who is too sincere
either to attack you without warning or to give a false alarm. I have
thrown my share of boot-jacks and other missiles at the nightly cat, and
with some small measure of success; but what boot-jack will reach the
howling mastiff domiciled several doors off, and whose owner says in
effect, "Boot me, boot my dog," or the converse? And what an "aid to
reflection," which Coleridge never conceived of, is that wretched
little whelp that explodes under my study window at the critical moment
of intellectual inspiration, like a pack of animated fire-crackers! Who
shall pretend to set off the occasional service which the canine voice
has rendered to man against the long and varied agonies which it has
inflicted on our race? Emerson has a fine touch of nature, which will go
to many a heart, when he enumerates among the recollected experiences of
childhood "the fear of dogs." Goethe's aversion to dogs, already alluded
to, seems to have been based chiefly upon their noisiness at night.
Charles Reade had a habit of hitting the nail on the head, and never
showed it more pithily than when he answered "Ouida's" application for a
name for her new pet poodle: "Call it Tonic, for it is sure to be a
mixture of bark, steal, and whine."

As to poodles and pugs, it is difficult for the masculine "man of
letters" to write. Fortunately, no member of my family has thus far
evinced any symptom of the poodle mania, so akin to the singular malady
which reduced poor Titania to the abject adoration of ass-headed Bottom.
Therefore any repugnance (this is purely an _ex post facto_ pun) on my
part cannot be attributed to jealousy. I feel that I cannot be too
thankful not to be numbered among the unhappy husbands indicated by the
following recent incident:

"Hello, old man!" said a gentleman to a friend, "what's that you've got
under your coat?"

"That," was the sad reply, as he brought it forth, "is my wife's little
pug dog."

"What are you going to do with him? Take him somewhere and drown him?"

"I wish I might," earnestly responded the gentleman, fetching a sigh.
"No, I am not going to drown him. My wife is having a new spring suit
made to harmonize with Beauty, as she is pleased to call the disgusting
little brute, and I am