of the tale. I should have credit for this arrangement -- a far wiser one
than that of La Fontaine and others, who reserve the impression to be
conveyed until the last moment, and thus sneak it in at the fag end of
their fables.

Defuncti injuria ne afficiantur was a law of the twelve tables, and De
mortuis nil nisi bonum is an excellent injunction -- even if the dead in
question be nothing but dead small beer. It is not my design, therefore,
to vituperate my deceased friend, Toby Dammit. He was a sad dog, it is
true, and a dog's death it was that he died; but he himself was not to
blame for his vices. They grew out of a personal defect in his mother. She
did her best in the way of flogging him while an infant -- for duties to
her well -- regulated mind were always pleasures, and babies, like tough
steaks, or the modern Greek olive trees, are invariably the better for
beating -- but, poor woman! she had the misfortune to be left-handed, and
a child flogged left-handedly had better be left unflogged. The world
revolves from right to left. It will not do to whip a baby from left to
right. If each blow in the proper direction drives an evil propensity out,
it follows that every thump in an opposite one knocks its quota of
wickedness in. I was often present at Toby's chastisements, and, even by
the way in which he kicked, I could perceive that he was getting worse and
worse every day. At last I saw, through the tears in my eyes, that there
was no hope of the villain at all, and one day when he had been cuffed
until he grew so black in the face that one might have mistaken him for a
little African, and no effect had been produced beyond that of making him
wriggle himself into a fit, I could stand it no longer, but went down upon
my knees forthwith, and, uplifting my voice, made prophecy of his ruin.

The fact is that his precocity in vice was awful. At five months of age he
used to get into such passions that he was unable to articulate. At six