Marius, blubbering over the shattered
chimney-stacks of Carthage, could not have displayed a more touching
classical spectacle than did that modern Roman lamenting to and fro
among the fragments of his collapsed martyrs and ruined saints; nor
were his pangs fully assuaged even by the application of the universal
panacea to an amount more than double the value of his lost wares.
A great difficulty in training this dog was to bring him "to heel,"--a
still greater one to keep him there when he came. If thrashed into his
proper place in his master's wake, he always resented the indignity by
biting him pretty severely in the legs with a savage whimper. This he
invariably did on first leaving the house with me, sometimes nipping me
so severely, after we had gone a short distance, that I have hesitated
whether to go back for a pistol to shoot him, or forward for a
pennyworth of biscuit to buy him off. When told to "hie away," the
extravagance of his joy knew no bounds. He would have been as
invaluable to a tailor as was to the Parisian _decrotteur_ the poodle
instructed by him to sully with his paws the shoes of the passengers;
for, in the exuberance of his gladness, he but too often rent
insufferably the vestments of the hapless pedestrians in his line of
fire.
Pages:
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220