RAB, MINOR.
HIS familiar name recalls the delightful story of "Rab and his Friends" in "Horæ Subsicivæ," with its naïve description of a very original "tyke" of a doggie—a biography which had so lived in my recollection that when a queer little fluffy dumpling of a puppy was given me I could not help giving it the old familiar name, little knowing how aptly true the name would prove to be in after years.
Is there anything more comical than a young Scotch terrier puppy, with its preternatural gravity,[p. 203] its queer, ungainly attempts at play, its tumbles, and blue-eyed simplicity, and, best of all, its sage look, with head on one side, trying to consider the merits of some doggie idea which is puzzling his infant brain? Rab went through all the stages of puppyhood, showing the usual amount of mischief and fun; he might be met carrying about some unfortunate slipper frayed to pieces by his busy teeth, or burying a favourite bone under a wool mat in the drawing-room, or, worse still, it is recorded in domestic chronicles that he buried a hymn-book in the garden, whereupon the cook remarked that she believed he had more religion in him than half the Christians; but that reasoning was not apparent to any one but herself.