If I knew that would be my last wot I would not change it. That is just
wot it would be.
But again.
What shall we do to avoid getting impregnated with the American dog and
then saturating our systems with the alien dog of Paris?
It is a serious matter, and if we do not want to play the Desdemona act
we must take some timely precautions. What must those precautions be?
Did it ever occur to the average thinking mind that we might squeeze
along for weeks without a dog? Whole families have existed for years
after being deprived of dogs. Look at the wealthy of our land. They go
on comfortably through life and die at last with the unanimous consent
of their heirs dogless.
Then why cannot the poor gradually taper oft on dogs? They ought not to
stop all of a sudden, but they could leave off a dog at a time until at
last they overcame the pernicious habit.
I saw a man in St. Paul last week who was once poor, and so owned seven
variegated dogs. He was confirmed in that habit. But he summoned all his
will-power at last and said he would shake off these dogs and become a
man. He did so, and today he owns a city lot in St. Paul, and seems to
be the picture of health.
The trouble about maintaining a dog is that he may go on for years in a
quiet, gentlemanly way, winning the regard of all who know him, and then
all of a sudden he may hydrophobe in the most violent manner. Not only
that, but he may do so while we have company. He may also bite our twins
or the twins of our warmest friends. He may bite us now and we may laugh
at it, but in five years from now, while we are delivering a humorous
lecture, we may burst forth into the audience and bite a beautiful young
lady in the parquet or on the ear.
It is a solemn thing to think of, fellow-citizens, and I appeal to
those who may read this, as a man who may not live to see a satisfactory
political reform--I appeal to you to refrain from the dog. He is purely
ornamental. We may love a good dog, but we ought to love our children
more. It would be a very, very noble and expensive dog that I would
agree to feed with my only son.
I know that we gradually become attached to a good dog, but some day he
may become attached to us, and what can be sadder than the sight of
a leading citizen drawing a reluctant mad dog down the street by main
strength and the seat of his pantaloons? (I mean his own, not the dog's
pants. This joke will appear in book form in April. The book will be
very readable, and there will be another joke in it also, eod tf.)
I have said a good deal about the dog, pro and con, and I am not a rabid
dog abolitionist, for no one loves to have his clear-cut features licked
by the warm, wet tongue of a noble dog any more than I do, but rather
than see hydrophobia become a national characteristic or a leading
industry here, I would forego the dog.
Perhaps all men are that way, however. When they get a little forehanded
they forget that they were once poor, and owned dogs. If so, I do not
wish to be unfair. I want to be just, and I believe I am. Let us yield
up our dogs and tack the affection that we would otherwise bestow on
them on some human being. I have tried it and it works well. There are
thousands of people in the world, of both sexes, who are pining and
starving for the love and money that we daily shower on the dog.
If the dog would be kind enough to refrain from introducing his justly
celebrated virus into the person of those only who kiss him on the cold,
moist nose, it would be all right; but when a dog goes mad he is very
impulsive, and he may bestow himself on an obscure man. So I feel a
little nervous myself.