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 bulldog 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 that kept a gentleman—
a gentleman who had been brought up at
Oxford, too. The dog kept the gentleman
entirely for his glorification, and the gentleman
never talked about anything but the terrier.
This, however, was not in a shy neighbourhood,
and is a digression consequently.

There are a great many dogs in shy
neighbourhoods, who keep boys. I have my eye on
a mongrel in Somers-town who keeps three
boys. He feigns that he can bring down sparrows,
and unburrow rats (he can do neither),
and he takes the boys out on sporting pretences
into all sorts of suburban fields. He has likewise
made them believe that he possesses some
mysterious knowledge of the art of fishing, and
they consider themselves incompletely equipped
for the Hampstead ponds, with a pickle-jar and
a wide-mouthed bottle, unless he is with them
and barking tremendously. There is a dog
residing in the Borough of Southwark who keeps
a blind man. He may be seen, most days, in
Oxford-street, hauling the blind man away on
expeditions wholly uncontemplated by, and
unintelligible to, the man: wholly of the dog's
conception and execution. Contrariwise, when the man
has projects, the dog will sit down in a crowded
thoroughfare and meditate. I saw him yesterday,
wearing the money-tray like an easy collar
instead of offering it to the public, taking the
man against his will, on the invitation of a
disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog at
Harrow— he was so intent on that direction.
The north wall of Burlington House Gardens,
between the Arcade and the Albany, offers a shy
spot for appointments among blind men at about
two or three o'clock in the afternoon. They
sit (very uncomfortably) on a sloping board
there, and compare notes. Their dogs may
always be observed at the same time, openly
disparaging the men they keep, to one another,
and settling where they shall respectively take
their men when they begin to move again. At
a small butcher's, in a shy neighbourhood (there
is no reason for suppressing the name; it is by
Notting-hill, and gives upon the district called
the Potteries), I know a shaggy black and white
dog who keeps a drover. He is a dog of an
easy disposition, and too frequently allows this
drover to get drunk. On these occasions, it is
the dog's custom to sit outside the public-house,
keeping his eye on a few sheep, and thinking.
I have seen him with six sheep, plainly casting-
up in his mind how many he began with when
he left the market, and at what places he has left
the rest. I have seen him perplexed by not
being able to account to himself for certain
particular sheep. A light has gradually broken on
him, he has remembered at what butcher's he left
them, and in a burst of grave satisfaction has
caught a fly off his nose, and shown himself
much relieved. If I could at any time have
doubted the fact that it was he who kept the
drover, and not the drover who kept him, it
would have been abundantly proved by his way
of taking undivided charge of the six sheep,
when the drover came out besmeared with red
ochre and beer, and gave him wrong directions,
which he calmly disregarded. He has taken the
sheep entirely into his own hands, has merely
remarked with respectful firmness, " That
instruction would place them under an omnibus;
you had better confine your attention to yourself
—you will want it all;" and has driven his
charge away, with an intelligence of ears and
tail, and a knowledge of business, that has left
his lout of a man very, very far behind.

As the dogs of shy neighbourhoods usually
betray a slinking consciousness of being in poor
circumstances— for the most part manifested in an
aspect of anxiety, an awkwardness in their play,
and a misgiving that somebody is going to
harness them to something, to pick up a living— so
the cats of shy neighbourhoods exhibit a strong
tendency to relapse into barbarism. Not only
are they made selfishly ferocious by ruminating
on the surplus population around them, and on
the densely crowded state of all the avenues to
cat's meat; not only is there a moral and
politico-economical haggardness in them, traceable
to these reflections; but they evince a physical
deterioration. Their linen is not clean, and is
wretchedly got up; their black turns rusty, like
old mourning; they wear very indifferent fur;
and take to the shabbiest cotton velvet, instead
of silk velvet. I am on terms of recognition with
several small streets of cats, about the Obelisk
in Saint George's Fields, and also in the vicinity
of Clerkenwell-green, and also in the back
settlements of Drury-lane. In appearance, they
are very like the women among whom they
live. They seem to turn out of their unwholesome
beds into the street, without any preparation.
They leave their young families to stagger
about the gutters, unassisted, while they frouzily
quarrel and swear and scratch and spit, at street
corners. In particular, I remark that when they
are about to increase their families (an event of
frequent recurrence) the resemblance is strongly
expressed in a certain dusty dowdiness, down-
at-heel self-neglect, and general giving up of
things. I cannot honestly report that I have
ever seen a feline matron of this class washing
her face when in an interesting condition.