HYDROPHOBIA. 



ALTHOUGH there is no necessary connection between ex- 

 treme heat and hydrophobia, yet popular belief, an influ- 

 ence stronger than truth itself, rules otherwise : hence my 

 thermometer, marking eighty-three in the shade, suggests 

 canine madness as a fitting subject of present discourse. 



Since that fatal day when Pandora, unlocking her chest, 

 rained down upon devoted humanity the manifold diseases 

 that mostly make death terrible whereas, but for them, 

 dying would be little else than going to sleep there has 

 been none perhaps to compare with hydrophobia, all the ele- 

 ments regarded that go to make up terror. 



It comes to us mostly through the bite of an animal that, 

 generically at least, if not individually, is one of man's best 

 friends the poison may even be imparted by a caress. When 

 a serpent bites mankind, the offspring of womankind, nobody 

 marvels, nobody complains ; it is a serpent's nature, and in 

 some sense, I suppose, a serpent's duty so to do ; but when a 

 dog, the natural friend of man, as if incited by some demon, 

 secretes a venom every way more dreadful than the ser- 

 pent's ; when, that venom communicated, the germ of future 

 torments unspeakable is sown, then are our thoughts prone 

 to wander into a forbidden range, to suggest the unholy ques- 

 tion : Whether all things here are ordained for the best. 



It is no mere figure of speech to affirm that the poison 

 of hydrophobia is more terrible than that of serpents. Di- 

 vesting the case of all the sentiment which comes of looking 



