The world makes few graver mistakes than in supposing a man must
necessarily possess all the cardinal virtues because he has a big dog
and some dirty children.
We know a butcher whose children are not merely dirty—they are
fearfully and wonderfully besmirched by the hand of an artist. He has,
in addition, a big dog with a tendency to dropsy, who flies at you
across the street with such celerity that he outruns his bark by a full
second, and you are warned of your danger only after his teeth are
buried in your leg. And yet the owner of these children and father of
this dog is no whit better, to all appearance, than a baker who has
clean brats and a mild poodle. He is not even a good butcher; he hacks
a rib and lacerates a sirloin. He talks through his nose, which turns
up to such an extent that the voice passes right over your head, and
you have to get on a table to tell whether he is slandering his dead
wife or swearing at yourself.
If that man possessed a thousand young ones, exaltedly nasty, and dogs
enough to make a sub-Atlantic cable of German sausage, you would find
it difficult to make us believe in him. In fact, we look upon the big
dog test of morality as a venerable mistake—natural but erroneous; and
we regard dirty children as indispensable in no other sense than that
they are inevitable.