THE DOG TRIBE. 209 



alarmed at what had just occurred. As every inmate of the house 

 had been in the constant custom of playing with the dog, she 

 imagined that mischief might be lurking somewhere. Its saliva 

 might have fallen on a scar which would receive the poison ; or, 

 perhaps, some trifling abrasion might have been made by the tooth 

 before the dog had shown symptoms of disease. No time was to be 

 lost. Everybody must have heard of the wonderful Ormskirk medi- 

 cine for the cure of hydrophobia. Our family farrier was in posses- 

 sion of the secret, and he always kept the medicine by him. We 

 were all to be dosed servants and everybody in the house. So he 

 came and gave us the instructions, which were, that we must take 

 the medicine fasting, on the following morning, and only eat a light 

 collation for supper. Nothing else. A more nauseous antidote I 

 had never tasted. Don Quixote's balsam of Fierabras, which made 

 Sancho Panza so dreadfully sick at his stomach, was nothing to it. 

 Some of the patients had no sooner taken it than the stomach 

 rejected it immediately. My interior being tough and vigorous, I 

 managed to keep it down. The medicine was bulky, and had to be 

 taken in warm beer it was the colour of brick-dust. The result 

 was most satisfactory, and for this very good reason, because no- 

 body had been bitten by the newly-arrived terrier from the island of 

 Skye in North Britain. I had a beautiful little springing spaniel, the 

 play-fellow of the terrier, and it was ordered to be hanged that same 

 evening, for having been in bad company. 



A Duke of Richmond, Governor of Canada, died raving mad in 

 consequence of a bite in the cheek from his tame fox. When I was 

 in that country, I went to a little rivulet, where the duke was first 

 attacked by hydrophobia. The officer who accompanied me said, 

 that when his Grace attempted to pass the stream, he could not do 

 so. After successive but unavailing trials, he gave up the attempt, 

 and he requested his brother officers not to consider him deficient in 

 fortitude ; but really the sight of the water gave him sensations 

 which he could not account for, and positively he could not pass 

 the rivulet. On the morning after, ere death had terminated his 

 life, it was told me that he mistook for spectres a group of poplar 

 trees, agitated by the breeze, near to the windows of his bedroom. 



Both in the " Wanderings " and in the " Essays," I have spoken of 



o 



