Dogs. 



5 



There are countries where the dogs are never fed, where 

 they are left to pick up a bare existence amongst the 

 vilest refuse, and where they walk like gaunt images of 

 famine, living skeletons, gnawing dry sticks in the wintry 

 moonlight, doing Nature's scavenger-work like rats. Yet 

 in every one of these miserable creatures beats the noble 

 canine heart — that heart whose depths of devotion have 

 never yet been sounded to the bottom ; that heart which 



The Kennel. 



Pen drawing after a lithograph by A. G. Decamps, by E. H. Saunders. 



forgets all our cruelty, but not the smallest evidence of 

 our kindness. If these poor animals had not been made 

 to love us, what excellent reasons they would have had 

 for hating us ! Their love has not been developed by 

 care and culture, like the nourishing ears of wheat ; but 

 it rises like warm, natural springs, where man has done 

 nothing either to obtain them or to deserve them. . . . 



Our dogs adore us without a suspicion of our shortcom- 

 ings. There is only one exception, but this is a grave one, 

 and must not on any account be forgotten. A good sport- 



