Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

through an inn window, after a comic fugitive. The next scene of

importance to the fable was a little marred in its interest by his

over-anxiety; forasmuch as while his master (a belated soldier in a

den of robbers on a tempestuous night) was feelingly lamenting the

absence of his faithful dog, and laying great stress on the fact

that he was thirty leagues away, the faithful dog was barking

furiously in the prompter’s box, and clearly choking himself

against his collar. But it was in his greatest scene of all, that

his honesty got the better of him. He had to enter a dense and

trackless forest, on the trail of the murderer, and there to fly at

the murderer when he found him resting at the foot of a tree, with

his victim bound ready for slaughter. It was a hot night, and he

came into the forest from an altogether unexpected direction, in

the sweetest temper, at a very deliberate trot, not in the least

excited; trotted to the foot-lights with his tongue out; and there

sat down, panting, and amiably surveying the audience, with his

tail beating on the boards, like a Dutch clock. Meanwhile the

murderer, impatient to receive his doom, was audibly calling to him

‘CO-O-OME here!’ while the victim, struggling with his bonds,

assailed him with the most injurious expressions. It happened

through these means, that when he was in course of time persuaded

to trot up and rend the murderer limb from limb, he made it (for

dramatic purposes) a little too obvious that he worked out that

awful retribution by licking butter off his blood-stained hands.

In a shy street, behind Long-acre, two honest dogs live, who

perform in Punch’s shows. I may venture to say that I am on terms

of intimacy with both, and that I never saw either guilty of the

falsehood of failing to look down at the man inside the show,

during the whole performance. The difficulty other dogs have in

satisfying their minds about these dogs, appears to be never

overcome by time. The same dogs must encounter them over and over

again, as they trudge along in their off-minutes behind the legs of

the show and beside the drum; but all dogs seem to suspect their

frills and jackets, and to sniff at them as if they thought those

articles of personal adornment, an eruption – a something in the

nature of mange, perhaps. From this Covent-garden window of mine I

noticed a country dog, only the other day, who had come up to

Covent-garden Market under a cart, and had broken his cord, an end

of which he still trailed along with him. He loitered about the

corners of the four streets commanded by my window; and bad London

dogs came up, and told him lies that he didn’t believe; and worse

London dogs came up, and made proposals to him to go and steal in

the market, which his principles rejected; and the ways of the town

confused him, and he crept aside and lay down in a doorway. He had

scarcely got a wink of sleep, when up comes Punch with Toby. He

was darting to Toby for consolation and advice, when he saw the

frill, and stopped, in the middle of the street, appalled. The

show was pitched, Toby retired behind the drapery, the audience

formed, the drum and pipes struck up. My country dog remained

immovable, intently staring at these strange appearances, until

Toby opened the drama by appearing on his ledge, and to him entered

Punch, who put a tobacco-pipe into Toby’s mouth. At this

spectacle, the country dog threw up his head, gave one terrible

howl, and fled due west.

We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk more

expressively of dogs keeping men. I know a bull-dog in a shy

corner of Hammersmith who keeps a man. He keeps him up a yard, and

makes him go to public-houses and lay wagers on him, and obliges

him to lean against posts and look at him, and forces him to

neglect work for him, and keeps him under rigid coercion. I once

knew a fancy terrier who kept a gentleman – a gentleman who had

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