my present condition with such a train of ideas 

 must necessarily excite, I will endeavour to 

 trim up the point of a neglected pen, and to 

 set it a running on the subject of Dog-breaking, 

 as solicited ; because I do think that it will do 

 you good as well as your four-footed friend. 

 By your leave, Sir, permit me the introduction 

 of this w^ord; for, if you are not prepared to 

 admit, nor solicitous to create, something like 

 this reciprocity of feeling between you, you 

 will never be able so effectually to second my 

 attempt, to put you in the way of establishing 

 to yourself a little system of occasional amuse- 

 ment together, in a situation where the nearly 

 total negation of what the world calls society, 

 makes it of more moment that you should not 

 be undeserving of each others company, upon 

 something like principle. 



In the introduction of my subject, connected 

 with a word of such very formal import, I can not 

 help expressing my apprehensions lest I should 

 be made a debtor to your expectations beyond 

 what I can be at all answerable for: I can not 

 engage to make up what I have got to say into 

 any thing like a regular treatise, nor to be mate- 

 rially studious of its arrangement: you must take 

 the materials as they come; put them in order, if 

 in that respect they should chance to be defec- 



