horn. Titania is
almost reduced to tears as he explains it is the halloo of Santa
Claus fading away into the distance.

[Illustration]

GISSING

Our subject, for the moment, is Gissing--and when we say Gissing we
mean not the author of that name, but the dog. He was called Gissing
because he arrived, in the furnace man's poke, on the same day on
which, after long desideration, we were united in holy booklock with
a copy of "By the Ionian Sea."

Gissing needs (as the man said who wrote the preface to Sir Kenelm
Digby's _Closet_) no Rhetoricating Floscules to set him off. He is
(as the man said who wrote a poem about New York) vulgar of manner,
underbred. He is young: his behaviour lacks restraint. Yet there is
in him some lively prescription of that innocent and indivisible
virtue that Nature omitted from men and gave only to Dogs. This is
something that has been the cause of much vile verse in bad poets,
of such gruesome twaddle as Senator Vest's dreadful outbark. But it
is a true thing.

How absurd, we will interject, is the saying: "Love me, love my
dog." If he really is my dog, he won't let you love him. Again, one
man's dog is another man's mongrel. Mr. Robert Cortes Holliday, that
quaint philosopher frequently doggishly nicknamed Owd Bob, went to
Washington lately to see President Harding. His eye fell upon the
White House Airedale. Now Owd Bob is himself something of an
Airedale trifler, and cherishes the memory of a certain Tristram
Shandy, an animal that frequently appeared in the lighter editorials
of the _Bookman_ when Mr. Holliday (then the editor) could think of
nothing else to write about. And of Mr. Harding's dog Mr. Holliday
reports, with grave sorrow: "I don't think he is a good Airedale. He
has too much black on him. Now Shandy had only a small saddle of
black...."

But such are matters concerning only students of full-bred dogs, of
whom we are not who.

As to Gissing: we were trying to think, while writing the preceding
excursion, how to give you his colour. Yellow is a word too violent,
too vulgarly connotative. Brown is a muddy word. Sandy is too pale.
Gamboge is a word used by artists, who are often immoral and
excitable. Shall we say, the colour of a corncob pipe, singed and
tawnied by much smoking? Or a pigskin tobacco pouch while it is
still rather new? Or the colour of the _Atlantic Monthly_ in the old
days, when it lay longer on the stands than it does now, and got
fa