It is all very well for Byron to rhapsodize about "the watch-dog's honest bark," and to think it "sweet" when it "bays deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home;" but when one has got inside of that home and gone to bed, and wants to sleep off his fatigue, it is not always 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 on my way to a dry-goods store to match him for half a yard more of material."
Ladies will pay as much as ten dollars a week for the board of a poodle in summer. And here is a specimen order at the inn wherein his puppyship is taking his ease:
"Room No. 122.—To the clerk of —— Hotel: Please send to my room, for the use of my little pet 'Watch,' a choice porter-house steak, cooked rare, and two chicken-wings, and charge to account of Mrs. ——."
But it is not always practicable to take our "dumb companions" with us in our travels. Accordingly, the following advertisement is said to have been recently inserted in the papers:
"Wanted, by a lady, a careful man to look after the house and be company for her dog during her absence in Europe."