"Well," said the Doctor, "suppose you give us one of these 'kinks,'
while our pipes are being smoked out, as an 'opiate' to send us all
to sleep."

"Be it understood, then," Spalding began, "that I like dogs in a
general way. They are plain dealing, honest, trusty folk in the
aggregate, albeit, there are what Tom Benton calls, 'dirty dogs.'
These, however, are mostly human canines, dogs that walk on two legs,
and wear clothes. Such curs I _don't_ like. But there are such, and
they may be seen and heard, barking, and snarling, and snapping in
their envy, at honest peoples' heels every day. Let them bark. Mr.
Benton was right. They are 'dirty dogs.' But a dog that looks you
honestly and frankly in the face, that stands by his master and
friend, in all times of trial, in sorrow as in joy, in adversity as in
prosperity, in dark days as in bright days, always cheerful, always
sincere, earnest, and truthful, and so that his kindness be met,
always happy, I like. He is your true nobility of nature below the
human. But there _are_ 'curs of low degree;' dogs of neither genial
instinct nor breeding; senseless animals, that belie the noble nature
of their species, are living libels upon their kind. There was one of
these over against my rooms, at the time of the sickness I speak of. I
say _was_ for thanks to the fates, he is among the things that have
been; he belongs to history, has been wiped out.

"He was a barking dog. When the moon was in the sky, he barked at the
moon. When only the stars shone out, he barked at the stars; when
clouds shut in both moon and stars, he barked at the clouds; and when
the darkness was so deep and black as to obscure even the clouds, he
barked at the darkness. Through all the long night he barked, barked,