other dogs with credit and reputation, and
was a most pliant and entertaining companion.
Sometimes her tastes, being of a vagabond sort,
led her away from home in the company of
dogs about town, who were of wild and even
profligate manners. These excesses gave her a
taste for the pleasures of the table, and an
immoderate fancy for meat, which had the usual
fatal results of a free life. In due time she
was laid up with an attack of the malady so
fatal to canine personal charms. There was
the usual fierce scratchings, and finally the
wiry hair began to come off in patches.
Eminent physicians were called in, and some sort
of cure effected. But the moral weakness was
not to be eradicated—nay, it developed with
restraint; and a fatal outrage, when she was
detected on the table-cloth after lunch, in the
act of trying to get a convenient hold of a
limbless fowl, preparatory to carrying it away,
caused a council to be held at once in reference
to her case. It was resolved, after a
secret deliberation—our opinion had not then
much weight in the councils of the house—to
get rid of Vixen the First: not, I am happy
to say, by execution or other violent measures,
but by conferring her as a gift on a gentleman
in the country, who fortunately had a taste for
"varmint"—in the sense of what is Bohemian
in the matter of sport—and for this reason was
willing to overlook those cutaneous blemishes.
But though unlike the leopard, she might
change her spots, she could not overcome her
old appetites, whetted by sharp country air and
pastimes; and we were soon grieved to learn
that the amateur of "varmint" had found
himself constrained to part with his useful assistant.
More than two years later, at a sea-side place,
a decayed-looking "cur" came creeping across
the street from the heels of a Sykes-looking
fellow, and looked up to me with wistful
recognition, as though half afraid that such
acknowledgment would take the shape of the prompt
and sharp kick. There was something very
piteous in this cringing self-depreciation. The
dog, too, was thin and bony, and the tail, once
carried so jauntily, as a knowing fellow wears
his hat, was now gathered up timorously under
the legs. Suddenly Sykes gave a whistle and
a sharp curse, and the luckless animal slunk off.
That was the last I saw of Vixen the First.

A year or so later some one brings to the
house a little diminutive Sky terrier, coal black,
rough-haired, not uncomely, and about two
hands long. This gentleman is known as
"Jack." Being a lady's property, he is forthwith
pampered, and made free of drawing-rooms
and bedrooms: which I feel acutely as a
retrospective injustice to the memory of the lost
Vixen the First.

Jack was, I suppose, the most delightful
instance of real, natural, undisguised selfishness
that could be conceived. Loaded with benefits,
stuffed with delicacies, he made not the slightest
pretence of caring for the persons who so
favoured him. In justice to him, it must be
admitted that he never attempted to bite them;
but after his meal, or indeed at any season, when
he was stretched at length on his rug, any
endearments from even the privileged hand of his
mistress, were resented with testy growlings
and ill-humoured movings away. The only
one for whom he had toleration or the faint
appearance of regard was a person of low degree,
an old retainer of the family, who kept a little
whip privately for his special behoof, and
who used to hold conversations with him
through the pantry-window. "I'll give you
the whip, sir, I will," &c. To this official, I
am proud to say for the sake of our common
animal nature, he was almost fawning in his
behaviour, making affectation of being
overjoyed to see him, and when the retainer
would return, after an absence of a week,
going—artful hypocrite—into convulsions of
whinings, jumpings, and such pretences of
delight. His mistress has been away a month,
and he has been known to trot up the kitchen
stairs to see what the commotion of her return
might be about, stand at a distance, look on at
the new arrival, then coolly turn his back, and
strut leisurely down again, as though the
matter was unworthy his attention. Yet it
was almost impossible not to feel an interest in
him, for this very indifference or independence.
And he had his good points also. He was a
perfect gentleman; seemed always to recollect his
good birth and breeding, and no persuasions
of servants could retain him below in their
kitchen quietly, save in very cold weather,
when he had his reasons for engaging the great
fire there. He was always intriguing to slip
away from servants. But, faithful to his
principles, he knew their dinner hour to the
moment, and no seductions of high society would
then prevent his going down to join them at
that desirable time. Sometimes if detained
above by stratagem, he would at last escape,
and would come galloping in among them, panting,
with an air, as though he were conferring
a favour, and as who should say, "I was
unavoidably detained, but I have since tried hard
to make up for lost time."

He had likewise learned little tricks of begging
round the table for food—a practice a little
humiliating for a gentleman of his birth, but
still consistent with his principles. For, if
invited "to beg" where food was not
concerned, he would resent it, and if importuned,
would growl. During meal-time he certainly
gave his mistress the preference, going on
short excursions to any one who invited him
with any conspicuous morsel, but returning to
her side. If, however, she said, "No more,
sir," and showed him the palms of her hands,
he at once turned away from her, with
unconcealed contempt, taking up his residence with
some more promising person. No bare endearments
could in the least detain him. Another
merit of his was rare personal courage. He
was afraid of no one, man, woman, child, or
dog. For so tiny a creature this was really to
be admired. Attack him with a stick or