forgets whether it ought to turn to the right or the left; or it goes half across a road and then takes fright at a cab, and runs speeding down the highway in front of it under the impression that the vehicle is in pursuit. Or it loiters at a corner to talk canine commonplaces to a strange dog, and then, like an idle errand boy, accompanies its new acquaintance a short way round several corners. Or it mixes itself up with an old gentleman’s legs, and gets eventually trodden upon, and precipitately makes off squeaking down the middle of a crowded thoroughfare into which its owner cannot follow it. Of all these weaknesses Jerry and his comrades are perfectly well aware; and if you will only follow the dog for a quarter of an hour you will see the little wretch get “lost,” as it calls itself — or as Jerry calls it, when the policeman inquires about the dog. There are some people who go through life leaving watches on dressing-tables and money on mantelpieces, and then prosecute the servants who steal them; others who lend strangers sovereigns in order to show their confidence in them, and then call in the police to get the stranger punished; others who post money in open envelopes, and are bitterly indignant with the authorities because it is never received by the addressee; many again who walk about with their purses in pockets placed where morality never meant pockets to be; who, in fact, are perpetually putting temptation into the way of their weak brethren, and then putting their weak brethren in gaol. And the foolish little white dog that is always getting itself stolen is exactly their representative in the canine society which, we are assured, reflects our own.
For myself, I think the dignified position which the dog fills in human society can be far more worthily
