"Good sir, or madam, as it may be--we most willingly embrace the offer
of your friendship. We long have known your excellent qualities. We
have wished to have you nearer to us; to hold you within the very
innermost fold of our heart. We can have no reserve towards a person
of your open and noble nature. The frankness of your humour suits
us exactly. We have been long looking for such a friend. Quick--let
us disburthen our troubles into each other's bosom--let us make our
single joys shine by reduplication--But _yap, yap, yap!_--what is
this confounded cur? he has fastened his tooth, which is none of the
bluntest, just in the fleshy part of my leg."
"It is my dog, sir. You must love him for my sake. Here,
Test--Test--Test!"
"But he has bitten me."
"Ay, that he is apt to do, till you are better acquainted with him. I
have had him three years. He never bites me."
_Yap, yap, yap!_--"He is at it again."
"Oh, sir, you must not kick him. He does not like to be kicked. I
expect my dog to be treated with all the respect due to myself."
"But do you always take him out with you, when you go a
friendship-hunting?"
"Invariably. 'Tis the sweetest, prettiest, best-conditioned animal. I
call him my _test_--the touchstone by which I try a friend. No one can
properly be said to love me, who does not love him."
"Excuse us, dear sir--or madam aforesaid--if upon further
consideration we are obliged to decline the otherwise invaluable offer
of your friendship. We do not like dogs."
"Mighty well, sir--you know the conditions--you may have worse offers.
Come along, Test."
The above dialogue is not so imaginary, but that, in the intercourse
of life, we have had frequent occasions of breaking off an agreeable
intimacy by reason of these canine appendages. They do not always
come in the shape of dogs; they sometimes wear the more plausible and
human character of kinsfolk, near acquaintances, my friend's friend,
his partner, his wife, or his children. We could never yet form a
friendship--not to speak of more delicate correspondences--however
much to our taste, without the intervention of some third anomaly,
some impertinent clog affixed to the relation--the understood _dog_
in the proverb. The good things of life are not to be had singly, but
come to us with a mixture; like a schoolboy's holiday, with a task
affixed to the tail of it. What a delightful companion is ****, if he
did not always bring his tall cousin with him! He seems to grow with
him; like some of those double births, which we remember to have read
of with such wonder and delight in the old "Athenian Oracle," where
Swift commenced author by writing Pindaric Odes (what a beginning for
him!) upon Sir William Temple. There is the picture of the brother,
with the little brother peeping out at his shoulder; a species of
fraternity, which we have no name of kin close enough to comprehend.
When **** comes, poking in his head and shoulders into your room,
as if to feel his entry, you think, surely you have now got him to
yourself--what a three hours' chat we shall have!--but, ever in the
haunch of him, and before his diffident body is well disclosed in your
apartment, appears the haunting shadow of the cousin, over-peering his
modest kinsman, and sure to over-lay the expected good talk with his
insufferable procerity of stature, and uncorresponding dwarfishness of
observation. Misfortunes seldom come alone. 'Tis hard when a blessing
comes accompanied. Cannot we like Sempronia, without sitting down to
chess with her eternal brother? or know Sulpicia, without knowing all
the round of her card-playing relations? must my friend's brethren
of necessity be mine also? must we be hand and glove with Dick Selby
the parson, or Jack Selby the calico printer, because W.S., who is
neither, but a ripe wit and a critic, has the misfortune to claim a
common parentage with them? Let him lay down his brothers; and 'tis
odds but we will cast him in a pair of ours (we have a superflux) to
balance the concession. Let F.H. lay down his garrulous uncle; and
Honorius dismiss his vapid wife, and superfluous establishment of six
boys--things between boy and manhood--too ripe for play, too raw for
conversation--that come in, impudently staring their father's old
friend out of countenance; and will neither aid, nor let alone, the
conference: that we may once more meet upon equal terms, as we were
wont to do in the disengaged state of bachelorhood.
It is well if your friend, or mistress, be content with these
canicular probations. Few young ladies but in this sense keep a dog.
But when Rutilia hounds at you her tiger aunt; or Ruspina expects you
to cherish and fondle her viper sister, whom she has preposterously
taken into her bosom, to try stinging conclusions upon your constancy;
they must not complain if the house be rather thin of suitors. Scylla
must have broken off many excellent matches in her time, if she
insisted upon all, that loved her, loving her dogs also.
An excellent story to this moral is told of Merry, of Della Cruscan
memory. In tender youth, he loved and courted a modest appanage to
the Opera, in truth a dancer, who had won him by the artless contrast
between her manners and situation. She seemed to him a native violet,
that had been transplanted by some rude accident into that exotic and
artificial hotbed. Nor, in truth, was she less genuine and sincere
than she appeared to him. He wooed and won this flower. Only for
appearance' sake, and for due honour to the bride's relations, she
craved that she might have the attendance of her friends and kindred
at the approaching solemnity. The request was too amiable not to be
conceded; and in this solicitude for conciliating the good will of
mere relations, he found a presage of her superior attentions to
himself, when the golden shaft should have "killed the flock of all
affections else." The morning came; and at the Star and Garter,
Richmond--the place appointed for the breakfasting--accompanied with
one English friend, he impatiently awaited what reinforcements the
bride should bring to grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had made.
They came in six coaches--the whole corps du ballet--French, Italian,
men and women. Monsieur de B., the famous _pirouetter_ of the day, led
his fair spouse, but craggy, from the banks of the Seine. The Prima
Donna had sent her excuse. But the first and second Buffa were there;
and Signor Sc----, and Signora Ch----, and Madame V----, with a
countless cavalcade besides of chorusers, figurantes, at the sight
of whom Merry afterwards declared, that "then for the first time it
struck him seriously, that he was about to marry--a dancer." But there
was no help for it. Besides, it was her day; these were, in fact, her
friends and kinsfolk. The assemblage, though whimsical, was all very
natural. But when the bride--handing out of the last coach a still
more extraordinary figure than the rest--presented to him as her
_father_--the gentleman that was to _give her away_--no less a person
than Signor Delpini himself--with a sort of pride, as much as to
say, See what I have brought to do us honour!--the thought of so
extraordinary a paternity quite overcame him; and slipping away under
some pretence from the bride and her motley adherents, poor Merry
took horse from the back yard to the nearest sea-coast, from which,
shipping himself to America, he shortly after consoled himself with a
more congenial match in the person of Miss Brunton; relieved from his
intended clown father, and a bevy of painted Buffas for bridemaids.