A NIGHT IN THE SEWERS.
[A Night in the Sewers.]
PERHAPS some of my fair readers will consider me a disagreeable person for telling them something I know about kid gloves. Perhaps they will not believe me when I tell them that in Paris and elsewhere there exists—or did exist not very long ago—an extensive trade in the skins of common rats, and that these skins, when dressed and dyed, are converted into those delicate coverings for the hands, commonly called "kid" gloves, and supposed to be manufactured from the hides of immature goats.
I was acquainted with a dog-dealer in Paris, a Dane, whose name was Beck. To him I went one day, bent upon obtaining a terrier dog of good intellect and agreeable manners, who should be a companion to me in my "lodgings for single gentlemen," and whose gambols might serve to amuse me in my lighter hours, when, after work, I would make little pedestrian excursions in the neighborhood, for the sake of exercise and air. Beck's kennel was comprised in a small yard, at the back of a rickety house; and, when I entered it, persuasion was hardly needed to induce me to stand as near the centre of the enclosure as possible, in order to keep at chain's length from what the French call boule dogues, several of which ill-looking canines formed a portion of Beck's stock in trade.