reminds me that you are not like the dogs I used to know--the dogs that
talked with their tails, caressed with their tongues, and were never
over-clean or well-behaved. Where are they now--collies, rat-worrying
terriers, hounds, spaniels, pointers, retrievers--dogs rough and dogs
smooth; big brute boarhounds, St. Bernard's, mastiffs, nearly or quite
as big as you are, but not so slender, silky-haired, and sharp-nosed,
and without your refined expression of keenness without cunning. And
after these canine noblemen of the old _regime_, whither has
vanished the countless rabble of mongrels, curs, and pariah dogs; and
last of all--being more degenerate--the corpulent, blear-eyed, wheezy
pet dogs of a hundred breeds? They are all dead, no doubt: they have
been dead so long that I daresay nature extracted all the valuable salts
that were contained in their flesh and bones thousands of years ago, and
used it for better things--raindrops, froth of the sea, flowers and
fruit, and blades of grass. Yet there was not a beast in all that crew
of which its master or mistress was not ready to affirm that it could do
everything but talk! No one says that of you, my gentle guardian; for
dog-worship, with all the ten thousand fungoid cults that sprang up and
flourished exceedingly in the muddy marsh of man's intellect, has
withered quite away, and left no seed. Yet in intelligence you are, I
fancy, somewhat ahead of your far-off progenitors: long use has also
given you something like a conscience. You are a good, sensible beast,
that's all. You love and serve your master, according to your lights;
night and day, you, with your fellows, guard his flocks and herds, his
house and fields. Into his sacred house, however, you do not intrude
your comely countenance, knowing your place."

"What, then, happened to earth, and how long did that undreaming slumber
last from which I woke to find things so altered? I do not know, nor
does it matter very much. I only know that there has been a sort of