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THE PUPPY: A PORTRAIT.1

R: LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY

(From "Patrins.")

[LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY: An American poet and essayist; born in Boston, Mass., January 17, 1861. She was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Providence, R.I., and began her literary career as a contributor to current periodicals. Her published volumes include: "Songs at the Start" (1884), "Goosequill Papers" (1885), "The White Sail" (1887), "Brownies and Bogies" (1888), “Monsieur Henri" (1892), “A Roadside Harp" (1893), “A Little English Gallery,” “Lovers' Saint Ruths,” and “Patrins” (1897).]

HE is the sixty-sixth in direct descent, and his coat is like amber damask, and his blue eyes are the most winning that you ever saw. They seem to proclaim him as much too good for the vulgar world, and worthy of such zeal and devotion as you, only you, could give to his helpless infancy. And, with a blessing upon the Abbot of Clairvaux, who is popularly supposed to have invented his species, you carry him home from the Bench show, and in the morning, when you are told that he has eaten a yard and a quarter of the new stair carpet, you look into those dreamy eyes again: no reproach shall reach him, you swear, because you stand forevermore between. And he grows great in girth, and in character the very chronicle and log book of his noble ancestry; he may be erratic, but he puts charm and distinction into everything he does. Your devotedness to his welfare keeps him healthful and honest, and absurdly partial to the squeak of your boots, or the imperceptible aroma which, as it would seem, you dispense, a mile away. The thing which pleases you most is his ingenuous childishness. It is a fresh little soul in the rogue's body :

Him Nature giveth for defense,

His formidable innocence.

You see him touch pitch every day, associating with the sewer-building Italians, with their strange oaths; with affected and cynical "sales ladies" in shops (she of the grape stall being clearly his too-seldom-relenting goddess); and with the bony Thomas cat down street, who is an acknowledged anarchist, and

1 Copyright, 1897, by Copeland & Day. Used by permission.

whose infrequent suppers have made him sour-complexioned towards society, and "thereby disallowed him," as dear Walton would say, "to be a competent judge." But Pup loses nothing of his sweet congenital absent-mindedness; your bringing up sits firmly upon him and keeps him young. Fe expands into a giant, and such as meet him on a lonely road have religion until he has passed. Seven, nine, ten months go over his whitehooded head; and behold, he is nigh a year old, and still Uranian. He begins to accumulate facts, for his observation of late has not been unscientific; but he cannot generalize, and on every first occasion he puts his foot in it. A music box transfixes him; the English language, proceeding from a parrot in a cage, shakes his reason for days. A rocking-horse on a piazza draws from him the only bad word he knows. He sees no obligation to respect persons with mumps, or with very red beards, or with tools and dinner pails; in the last instance, he acts advisedly against honest labor, as he perceives that most overalls have kicks in them. Following Plato, he would reserve his haughty demeanor for slaves and servants. Moreover, before the undemonstrated he comes hourly to a pause. If a wheelbarrow, unknown hitherto among vehicles, approach him from his suburban hill, he is aware of the supernatural; but he will not flinch, as he was wont to do once; rather will he stand four-square, with eyebrows and crinkled ears vocal with wonder and horror. Then the man back of the moving bulk speaks over his truck to you, in the clear April evening: "Begorra, 'tis his furrust barry!" and you love the man for his accurate, affectionate sense of the situation. When Pup is too openmouthed and curious, when he dilates, in fact, with the wrong emotion, it reflects upon you, and reveals the flaws in your educational system. He blurts out dire things before fine ladies. If he hear one of them declaiming, with Delsarte gestures, in a drawing-room, he appears in the doorway, undergoing symptoms of acutest distress, and singing her down, professedly for her own sake; and afterward he pities her so, and is so chivalrously drawn toward her in her apparent aberration, that he lies for hours on the flounce of her gown, eying you, and calumniating you somewhat by his vicarious groans and sighs. But ever after, Pup admits the recitation of tragic selections as one human folly more.

He is so big and so unsophisticated, that you daily feel the incongruity, and wish, in a vague sort of way, that there was a

street boarding school in your town, where he could rough it away from an adoring family, and learn to be responsible and self-opinionated, like other dogs. He has a maternal uncle, on the estate across the field: a double-chinned tawny ogre, goodnatured as a baby, and utterly rash and improvident, whose society you cannot covet for your tender charge. One fine day, Pup is low wit' the distemper, and evidence is forthcoming that he has visited, under his uncle's guidance, the muchdeceased lobster thrown into hotel tubs. After weeks of anxious nursing, rubbings in oil, and steamings with vinegar, during which time he coughs and wheezes in a heartbreaking imitation of advanced consumption, he is left alone a moment on his warm rug, with the thermometer in his special apartment steady at seventy-eight degrees, and plunges out into the winter blast. Hours later, he returns; and the vision of his vagabond uncle, slinking around the house, announces to you in what companionship he has been. Plastered to the skull in mud and icicles, wet to the bone, jaded, guilty, and doomed now, of course, to die, Pup retires behind the kitchen table. The next morning he is well. The moral, to him at least, is that our uncle is an astute and unappreciated person, and a genuine man of the world.

Yet our uncle, with all his laxity, has an honorable heart, and practices the maxima reverentia puero. It is not from him that Pup shall learn his little share of iniquity. Meanwhile, illumination is nearing him in the shape of a little old white bull terrier of uncertain parentage, with one ear, and a scar on his neck, and depravity in the very lift of his stumped tail. This active imp, recently come to live in the neighborhood, fills you with forebodings. You know that Pup must grow up sometime, must take his chances, must fight and be fooled, must err and repent, must exhaust the dangerous knowledge of the great university for which his age at last befits him. The ordeal will harm neither him nor you: and yet you cannot help an anxious look at him, full four feet tall from crown to toe, and with a leg like an obelisk, preserving unseasonably his ambiguous early air of exaggerated goodness. One day he follows you from the station, and meets the small Mephisto on the homeward path. They dig a bone together, and converse behind trees; and when you call Pup, he snorts his initial defiance, and dances away in the tempter's wake. Finally, your whistle compels him, and he comes soberly forward. By

this time the ringleader terrier is departing, with a diabolical wink. You remember that, a moment before, he stood on a mound, whispering in your innocent's beautiful dangling ear, and you glance sharply at Pup. Yes, it has happened! He will never seem quite the same again, with

-the contagion of the world's slow stain.

beginning in his candid eyes. He is a dog now. He knows.

GEORGE BORROW AND THE PUBLISHER.1
(From "Lavengro.")

[GEORGE BORROW, philologist, was born at East Dereham, Norfolk, England, in 1803, and was educated chiefly in Edinburgh, Scotland. He published "Faustus" (translated from German, 1825), "Romantic Ballads" (translated from Danish, 1828), "Targum" (1835), "The Zincali; or, an Account of the Gypsies in Spain (2 vols., 1841), "The Bible in Spain" (3 vols., 1843), "Lavengro" (1851), “The Romany Rye" (1857), "The Sleeping Bird" (translated from Cambrian-British, 1860), "Wild Wales" (2 vols., 1862), and "Romano Lavo-Lil" (1874). He died at Oulton, Norfolk, England, July 30, 1881.]

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THERE were two individuals in the room in which I now found myself; it was a small study, surrounded with bookcases, the window looking out upon the square. Of these individuals he who appeared to be the principal stood with his back to the fireplace. He was a tall stout man, about sixty, dressed in a loose morning gown. The expression of his countenance would have been bluff but for a certain sinister glance, and his complexion might have been called rubicund but for a considerable tinge of bilious yellow. He eyed me askance as I entered. The other, a pale, shriveled-looking person, sat at a table apparently engaged with an account book; he took no manner of notice of me, never once lifting his eyes from the page before him.

“Well, sir, what is your pleasure?" said the big man, in a rough tone, as I stood there, looking at him wistfully—as well I might -for upon that man, at the time of which I am speaking, my principal, I may say my only, hopes rested.

"Sir," said I, "my name is so-and-so, and I am the bearer of a letter to you from Mr. so-and-so, an old friend and correspondent of yours."

1 By permission of Mr. Murray. (Price 2s. 6d.)

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The countenance of the big man instantly lost the suspicious and lowering expression which it had hitherto exhibited; he strode forward, and, seizing me by the hand, gave me a violent squeeze.

"My dear sir," said he, "I am rejoiced to see you in London. I have been long anxious for the pleasure we are old friends, though we have never before met. Taggart," said he to the man who sat at the desk, "this is our excellent correspondent, the friend and pupil of our other excellent correspondent."

The pale, shriveled-looking man slowly and deliberately raised his head from the account book, and surveyed me for a moment or two; not the slightest emotion was observable in his countenance. It appeared to me, however, that I could detect a droll twinkle in his eye: his curiosity, if he had any, was soon gratified; he made me a kind of bow, pulled out a snuffbox, took a pinch of snuff, and again bent his head over the page.

"And now, my dear sir," said the big man, "pray sit down, and tell me the cause of your visit. I hope you intend to remain here a day or two."

"More than that," said I; "I am come to take up my abode in London.”

"Glad to hear it; and what have you been about of late? got anything which will suit me? Sir, I admire your style of writing, and your manner of thinking; and I am much obliged to my good friend and correspondent for sending me some of your productions. I inserted them all, and wished there had been more of them- quite original, sir, quite took with the public, especially the essay about the non-existence of anything. I don't exactly agree with you though; I have my own peculiar ideas about matter as you know, of course, from the book I have published. Nevertheless, a very pretty piece of speculative philosophy-no such thing as matter-impossible that there should be- ex nihilo - what is the Greek? I have forgot -very pretty indeed; very original.'

"I am afraid, sir, it was very wrong to write such trash, and yet more to allow it to be published."

"Trash! not at all; a very pretty piece of speculative philosophy; of course you were wrong in saying there is no world. The world must exist, to have the shape of a pear; and that the world is shaped like a pear, and not like an apple, as the fools of Oxford say, I have satisfactorily proved in my book.

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