his health proposed, and the laudatory notes
of " For he's a jolly good fellow! " go round.

There are three notable institutions in
Tattyboys Rents, I am rather at a loss which
first to touch upon. These are the posts, the
children, and the dogs—and all three as
connected with the steps. Suppose, in reverse
order of rank, I take the brute creation first.
Tattyboys Rents if it were famous for
anything, which it is not, should be famous for
its dogs. They are remarkable, firstly, for
not having any particular breed. Gilks, the
chandler's shopkeeper, had a puppy which
was "giv' to him by a party as was always
mixed up with dogs," which he thought, at
first, would turn out a pointer, then a terrier,
then a spaniel; but was miserably
dissappointed in all his conjectures. He had gone
to the expense of a collar for him, and the
conversion of an emptied butter firkin into a
kennel, and, in despair, took him to Chuffers,
the greengrocer, and dog's meat vender, in
Blitsom Street, and solemnly asked his
opinion upon him. " There hain't a hinch of
breed in him," was the dictum of Chuffers, as
he contemptuously bestowed a morsel of
eleemosynary paunch upon the low-bred cur.
Charley (this was the animal's name), grew
up to be a gaunt dog  of wolf-like aspect, an
incorrigible thief, a shameless profligate, a
bully and a tyrant. He was the terror of the
children and the other dogs; and as if that
unhappy Gilks had not already sufficient
sorrows upon his head, had the inconceivable
folly and wickedness to make an attack one
Monday morning upon the sacred black silk
dress of Miss Tattyboys. You may imagine
that Barwise was down upon Gilks the very
next day, like a portcullis. Charley henceforth
disappeared. Gilks had a strange
affection for him, and still cherished a fond
belief that he would turn out something in
the thorough-bred line some day; but the
butter-firkin was removed to the back yard,
and Charley was supposed to pass the rest of
his existence in howling and fighting with his
chain in that town-house amid brickbats,
cabbage-stalks and clothes-pegs, having in
addition a villegiatura or country-house in an
adjacent dust-bin, into which the length of
his chain just allowed him to scramble, and
in the which he sat among the dust and
ashes, rasping himself occasionally (for
depilatory purposes) against a potsherd.

There is a brown dog of an uncertain shade
of mongrelity who (they are all such
characters these dogs that I think they deserve
a superior pronoun) belongs to nobody in
particular, and is generally known in the Rents
as the Bow-wow. As such it is his avocation
and delight to seek the company of very young
children (those of from eighteen months to two
years of age are his preference) whose favour
and familiarity he courts, and whom he amuses
by his gambols and good-humour. The bow-
wow is a welcome guest on all door-steps,
and in most entrance halls. His gymnastics
are a never-failing source of amusement to
the juvenile population, and he derives
immense gratification from the terms of
endearment and cajolement addressed by the
mothers and nurses to their children, all of
which expressions this feeble-minded animal
takes to be addressed to himself, and at which
he sniggers his head and wags his stump of a
tail tremendously. I have yet to learn
whether this brown, hairy, ugly dug is so
fond of the little children, and frisks round
them, and rolls them over with such tender
lovingness, and suffers himself to be pulled
and pinched and poked by his playmates all
with immovable complacency—I say, I have
yet to learn whether he does all this through
sheer good-hurnour and fondness for children,
or whether he is a profound hypocrite, skilled
in the ways of the world, and knowing that
the way to Mother Hubbard's cupboard,
when there are any bones in it, is through
Mother Hubbard's heart. I hope, for the
credit of dog nature and for my own
satisfaction, loving it, that the first is the cause.

The only dog in the Rents that can claim
any family or breed is an animal by the name
of Buffo, who was, in remote times, a French
poodle. I say was; for the poodleian
appearance has long since departed from him,
and he resembles much more, now, a very
dirty, shaggy, white bear, seen through the
small end of an opera-glass. He was the
property, on his first introduction to the
Rents of one Monsieur Phillips—whether
originally Philippe or not, I do not know—
who, it was inferred from sundry strange
paraphernalia that he left behind him on his
abrupt departure from his residence, was
something in the magician, not to say conjuror
and mountebank line. Buffo was then a
glorious animal, half shaved, as poodles should
be, with fluffy rings round his legs, and two
tufts on his haunches, and a coal-black nose,
and a pink skin. He could mount and
descend a ladder; he could run away when
Monsieur Phillips hinted that there was a
"policeman coming;" he could limp on one
leg; he could drop down dead, dance, climb
up a lamp-post at the word of command. It
was even said that he had been seen in James
Street, Covent Garden, on a ragged piece of
carpet, telling fortunes upon the cards, and
pointing out Monsieur Phillips as the greatest
rogue in company. Monsieur Phillips,
however, one morning suddenly disappeared,
leaving sundry weeks' rent owing to his landlord,
Chapford, of the beershop; his only
effects being the strange implements of
legerdemain I have noticed, and the dog Buffo,
whom he had placed at livery, so to state, at
least at a fixed weekly stipend for his board
and lodging. I need not say that in a very short
time the unfortunate dog " eat his head right
off; " the amount of paunch he had consumed
far exceeding his marketable value. Chapford,
after vainly debating as to the propriety of
turning the magician's cups into half-pint