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.
I love the St. Bernard; he is a noble creature, and his beautiful
life-saving instinct is such that I have seen a huge member of the breed
jump off a high bridge to save a puppy which he considered to be
drowning. The St. Bernard will allow a little child to lead him and to
smite him on the nose without his uttering so much as a whine by way of
remonstrance. If another dog attacks him, he will not retaliate by
biting--that would be undignified, and like a mere bull-dog; he lies
down on his antagonist and waits a little; then that other dog gets up
when it has recovered breath, and, after thinking the matter over, it
concludes that it must have attacked a sort of hairy traction-engine.
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