THE AUNT, THE NIECES, AND 

 THE DOG 1 



WHEN a thing is old, broken, and useless we 

 throw it on the dust-heap, but when it is suffi- 

 ciently old, sufficiently broken, and sufficiently 

 useless we give money for it, put it into a 

 museum, and read papers over it which people 

 come long distances to hear. By-and-by, when 

 the whirligig of time has brought on another 

 revenge, the museum itself becomes a dust- 

 heap, and remains so till after long ages it is 

 re-discovered, and valued as belonging to a 

 neo-rubbish age containing, perhaps, traces 

 of a still older paleo-rubbish civilisation. So 

 when people are old, indigent, and in all re- 

 spects incapable, we hold them in greater and 

 greater contempt as their poverty and impo- 

 tence increase, till they reach the pitch when 



1 Published in the Universal Review, May 1889. As I have 

 several times been asked if the letters here reprinted were not 

 fabricated by Butler himself, I take this opportunity of stating 

 that they are authentic in every particular, and that the 

 originals are now in my possession. R. A. S. 



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