“The hallucinations of Smith,” said Spalding, after we had settled the matter of the pipes, and were enjoying a fresh pull at the weed, “as described by the Doctor, remind me of a slight attack of fever which I had some months ago, and from which I recovered partly through the aid of the Doctor’s medicine, and partly through the kindness of a young friend of mine; and of the strange ‘kinks,’ as you call them, which got into my head between the fever and the Doctor’s opiates.  Things were strangely mixed up, the real and the unreal grouped and mingled in a manner that gave to all the just proportions and appearance of sober actualities.  I remember them as distinctly, and they made as deep and abiding impression upon my mind as if I had seen them all.  They are impressed as palpably and indelibly upon my memory now as any actual events of my life.”

“Well,” said the Doctor, “suppose you give us one of these ‘kinks,’ while our pipes are being smoked out, as an ‘opiate’ to send us all to sleep.”

“Be it understood, then,” Spalding began, “that I like dogs in a general way.  They are plain dealing, honest, trusty folk in the aggregate, albeit, there are what Tom Benton calls, ‘dirty dogs.’  These, however, are mostly human canines, dogs that walk on two legs, and wear clothes.  Such curs I don’t like.  But there are such, and they may be seen and heard, barking, and snarling, and snapping in their envy, at honest peoples’ heels every day.  Let them bark.  Mr. Benton was right.  They are ‘dirty dogs.’  But a dog that looks you honestly and frankly in the face, that stands by his master and friend, in all times of trial, in sorrow as in joy, in adversity as in prosperity, in dark days as in bright days, always cheerful, always sincere, earnest, and truthful, and so that his kindness be met, always happy, I like.  He is your true nobility of nature below the human.  But there are ‘curs of low degree;’ dogs of neither genial instinct nor breeding; senseless animals, that belie the noble nature of their species, are living libels upon their kind.  There was one of these over against my rooms, at the time of the sickness I speak of.  I say was for thanks to the fates, he is among the things that have been; he belongs to history, has been wiped out.

“He was a barking dog.  When the moon was in the sky, he barked at the moon.  When only the stars shone out, he barked at the stars; when clouds shut in both moon and stars, he barked at the clouds; and when the darkness was so deep and black as to obscure even the clouds, he barked at the darkness.  Through all the long night he barked, barked, barked!  It was not a bark of defiance, nor of alarm, nor of astonishment, nor of warning.  It was not a note of danger, breaking the hush of midnight, saying that thieves were abroad, that murder was on its stealthy mission, or that the wolf was on the walk.  It was a senseless, monotonous, idiotic bow, wow!  Nothing more, nothing less.