ent suggestive of climbing
down.

At the end of the half hour we discussed the advisability of "chancing
it," but decided not to. "We should never," George said, "confound
foolhardiness with courage."

"Courage," he continued--George had quite a gift for maxims--"courage is
the wisdom of manhood; foolhardiness, the folly of youth."

He said that to get down from the table while that dog remained in the
room, would clearly prove us to be possessed of the latter quality; so
we restrained ourselves, and sat on.

We sat on for over an hour, by which time, having both grown careless
of life and indifferent to the voice of Wisdom, we did "chance it;" and
throwing the table-cloth over our would-be murderer, charged for the
door and got out.

The next morning we complained to our landlady of her carelessness in
leaving wild beasts about the place, and we gave her a brief if not
exactly truthful, history of the business.

Instead of the tender womanly sympathy we had expected, the old lady sat
down in the easy chair and burst out laughing.

"What! old Boozer," she exclaimed, "you was afraid of old Boozer! Why,
bless you, he wouldn't hurt a worm! He ain't got a tooth in his head,
he ain't; we has to feed him with a spoon; and I'm sure the way the cat
chivies him about must be enough to make his life a burden to him. I
expect he wanted you to nurse him; he's used to being nursed."

And that was the brute that had kept us sitting on a table, with our
boots off, for over an hour on a chilly night!

Another bull-dog exhibition that occurs to me was one given by my uncle.
He had had a bulldog--a young one--given to him by a friend. It was a
grand dog, so his friend had told him; all it wanted was training--it
had not been properly trained. My uncle did not profess to know much
about the training of bull-dogs; but it seemed a simple enough matter,
so he thanked the man, and took his prize home at the end of a rope.

"Have we got to live in the house with _this?_" asked my aunt,
indignantly, coming in to the room about an hour after the dog's advent,
followed by the quadruped himself, wearing an idiotically self-satisfied
air.

"That!" exclaimed my uncle, in astonishment; "why, it's a splendid dog.
His father was honorably mentioned only last year at the Aquarium."

"Ah, well, all I can say is, that his son isn't going the way to
get honorably mentioned in this neighborhood," replied my aunt, with
bitterness; "he's just f