Dogs, when they are sure of having their own way, have sometimes
ways as odd as those of the unfurred, unfeathered animals, who walk
on two legs, and talk, and are called rational. My beautiful white
greyhound, Mayflower,* for instance, is as whimsical as the finest
lady in the land. Amongst her other fancies, she has taken a
violent affection for a most hideous stray dog, who made his
appearance here about six months ago, and contrived to pick up a
living in the village, one can hardly tell how. Now appealing to
the charity of old Rachael Strong, the laundress--a dog-lover by
profession; now winning a meal from the lightfooted and open-hearted
lasses at the Rose; now standing on his hind-legs, to extort by
sheer beggary a scanty morsel from some pair of 'drouthy cronies,'
or solitary drover, discussing his dinner or supper on the
alehouse-bench; now catching a mouthful, flung to him in pure
contempt by some scornful gentleman of the shoulder-knot, mounted on
his throne, the coach-box, whose notice he had attracted by dint of
ugliness; now sharing the commons of Master Keep the shoemaker's
pigs; now succeeding to the reversion of the well-gnawed bone of
Master Brown the shopkeeper's fierce house-dog; now filching the
skim-milk of Dame Wheeler's cat:--spit at by the cat; worried by the
mastiff; chased by the pigs; screamed at by the dame; stormed at by
the shoemaker; flogged by the shopkeeper; teased by all the
children, and scouted by all the animals of the parish;--but yet
living through his griefs, and bearing them patiently, 'for
sufferance is the badge of all his tribe;'--and even seeming to
find, in an occasional full meal, or a gleam of sunshine, or a wisp
of dry straw on which to repose his sorry carcase, some comfort in
his disconsolate condition.