the Thibetan shepherd who first made a wolf turn traitor to the lupine race.  But who first invented the pet-dog?  This impassioned question I ask with thoughts that are a very great deal too deep for tears.  Consider what the existence of the pet-dog means.  You visit an estimable lady, and you are greeted, almost in the hall, by a poodle, who waltzes around your legs and makes an oration like an obstructionist when the Irish Estimates are before the House.  You feel that you are pale, but you summon up all your reserves of base hypocrisy and remark, “Poor fellow!  Poo-poo-poo-ole fellow!” You really mean, “I should like to tomahawk you, and scalp you afterwards!”—­but this sentiment you ignobly retain in your own bosom.  You lift one leg in an apologetic way, and poodle instantly dashes at you with all the vehemence of a charge of his compatriots the Cuirassiers.  You shut your eyes and wait for the shedding of blood; but the torturer has all the malignant subtlety of an Apache Indian, and he tantalizes you.  Presently the lady of the house appears, and, finding that you are beleaguered by an ubiquitous foe, she says sweetly, “Pray do not mind Moumou; his fun gets the better of him.  Go away, naughty Moumou!  Did Mr. Blank frighten him then—­the darling?” Fun!  A pleasing sort of fun!  If the rescuer had seen that dog’s sanguinary rushes, she would not talk about fun.  When you reach the drawing-room, there is a pug seated on an ottoman.  He looks like a peculiarly truculent bull-dog that has been brought up on a lowering diet of gin-and-water, and you gain an exaggerated idea of his savagery as he uplifts his sooty muzzle.  He barks with indignation, as if he thought you had come for his mistress’s will, and intended to cut him off with a Spratt’s biscuit.  Of course he comes to smell round your ankles, and equally of course you put on a sickly smile, and take up an attitude as though you had sat down on the wrong side of a harrow.  Your conversation is strained and feeble; you fail to demonstrate your affection; and, when a fussy King Charles comes up and fairly shrieks injurious remarks at you, the sense of humiliation and desertion is too severe, and you depart.  Of course your hostess never attempts to control her satellites—­they are quiet with her; and, even if one of them sampled the leg of a guest with a view to further business, she would be secretly pleased at such a proof of exclusive affection.  We suppose that people must have something to be fond of; but why should any one be fond of a pug that is too unwieldy to move faster than a hedgehog?  His face is, to say the least, not celestial—­whatever his nose may be; he cannot catch a rat; he cannot swim; he cannot retrieve; he can do nothing, and his insolence to strangers eclipses the best performances of the finest and tallest Belgravian flunkeys.  He is alive, and in his youth he may doubtless have been comic and engaging; but in his obese, waddling, ill-conditioned old age he is such an atrocity that one wishes a wandering Chinaman might pick him up and use him instantly after the sensible thrifty fashion of the great nation.