Intimately associated as I
have been from earliest boyhood with many excellent fellows of the
family, from social communion with which I am at present debarred only
by the direful necessity of dwelling in lodgings,--a necessity which,
if distasteful to Man, to Dog, oh, how fatal!--bound, I may say, as I
was for years, not by straps and chains only, but by ties of confident
friendship also, to canine comrades possessing the purest elements of
worth and humor, it is to me a task not altogether devoid of interest
to fall back on such memories as may enable me to chronicle a few
reminiscences of the nobilities and eccentricities of the race.
Before I discourse of individual dogs of the present century, however,
with whom I have had the pleasure of being personally acquainted, let
me reproduce the following short tale of a dog from an old French
volume,--a tome fittingly adorned with ears of that noble animal
innumerable.
Persimel St. Remi was a gentleman of fortune, whose income was derived
principally from large rented farms, the dues arising from which he
sometimes collected himself, in preference to intrusting that important
duty to a steward or agent. On his excursions for that purpose, he was
generally accompanied by a favorite little spaniel, of a kind too small
to be of any service to him as an escort, but inestimable for his
qualities as a companion.
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