NOTES 337 



continuance of it, th;m any otlier animal. As to " the poor tilings pant- 

 ing in harness," a dog will pant from ruiniing a hundred yards or less ; 

 it does not proceed from distress, but very often from pleasure. I take it 

 on myself to affirm, that there is far less cruelty inflicted on dogs in harness 

 than on horses. In all the barrows I have ever seen I never saw a lean 

 dog, or a dog low in condition, and never knew one either galled in the 

 shoulders or withers, or with sore feet ; and, I never saw one, that when 

 taken out of his barrow, when the time came to work again, who did not 

 race rejoicingly up to it, barking with pleasure to be reharnessed. As to 

 " cruelly beating tlie dogs in harness," that is not often done, and not one 

 quarter done in proportion to numbers as in the case of horses and asses, 

 and for this very good reason : if you savagely ill-treat a dog, you may 

 make him lie down and crouch at the feet of his tyrant, but aU the whips 

 in the world won't make him draw. It was cruel enough to murder by 

 legislation the contented and well-fed dogs that worked in harness for the 

 poor in cities and towns, and it was as cruel to take from cripples their 

 only method of locomotion, from those who were conveyed from place to 

 place by their dogs, which the bill, banishing the dog-barrows from the 

 pavements, did. The worst of all was the fact regarding the poor little 

 living Trunk, for his thighs were off close to the body, whose two con- 

 tented and fat dogs used to draw him in a little cart to a sunny wall in 

 Piccadilly, and there sit by his side, tlie only things in the world that 

 seemed to love him. The bill of the " over-righteous " self-seekers passed, 

 and this poor little object of compassion to every really charitably-disposed 

 heart, was condemned for ever to grovel on the earth, or crawl, a worm, 

 on the ftice of it. There was much that was wretched in his death, though 

 perhaps attended by a ghastly comicality. Torn by this tyrannical bill 

 from his dogs and from the possibility of rendering himself visible in the 

 great thoroughfare, he had no means of receiving money for his support 

 or theirs, and with a broken heart the poor cripple was obliged to consign 

 his beloved four-footed companions to death ; and then, as a last relief 

 from the monotony of the cold ground, and in the hope of earning a few 

 pence, he let himself out to a barrel-organ on wheels, sitting over the 

 restless machine, and having a small share in the day's profits. The gut 

 of a fiddle would have broken in such a grinding situation, no wonder then 

 that after enduring the constant grinding of the machine beneath him, 

 this poor cripple became insane and died. I fearlessly assert, that dozens 

 of rich men, or men capable of keeping skittish horses, but not their seats 

 in the saddle, had better tumble off, as by their own account they in- 

 variably do when their horse shies, than ten thousand of the poorest 

 families should be thrown out of their bread, or twenty thousand useful 

 sagacious and affectionate animals murdered. I say to all those who wish 

 to take dogs out of harness, that the worst fault men calling themselves 



