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"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 o us; to hold you within the very innermost fold of our heart. We have no reserve towards a person of your open and ure. 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 others bosom -- let us make our single joys shine by reduplication -- But yap, yap, yap! -- what is this founded cur? he has fastened his tooth, which is none of the blu, 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 he kicked. I expect my dog to be treated with all the respect due to myself" [p 267]
"But do you always take him out with you, when you go a friendship-hunting?
"Invariably. `Tis the sweetest, prettiest, best-ditioned animal. I call him my test -- the touchstone by which I try a friend. No one properly be said to love me, who does not love him."
"Excuse us, dear sir -- or madam aforesaid -- if upon further sideration we are obliged to dee the otherwise invaluable offer of your friendship. We do not like dogs."
"Mighty well, sir -- you know the ditions -- you may have worse offers. e along, Test."
The above dialogue is not so imaginary, but that, iercourse of life, we have had frequent occasions of breaking off an agreeable intimacy by reason of these e appehey do not always e in the shape of dogs; they sometimes wear the more plausible and human character of kinsfolk, near acquaintances, my friends 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 imperti clog affixed to the relation -- the uood dog in the proverb. The good things of life are not to be had singly, but e to us with a mix.ure; like a schoolboys holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it. What a delightful panion 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 enced 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 prehend. When **** es, 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 e alois hard when a blessing es apanied. ot we like Sempronia, without sitting down to chess with her eternal brother? or know S藏书网ulpicia, without knowing all the round of her card-playiions? my friends brethren of y be mine also? must we be hand in glove with Dick Selby the parson, or Jack Selby the calico printer, because W. S., who is [p 268] her, but a ripe wit and a critic, has the misfortuo claim a on pareh 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 balahe cessio 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 versation -- that e impudently staring their fathers old friend out of tenance; will her aid, nor let alohe ferehat we may oneet upon equal terms, as we were wont to do in the diseate of bachelorhood.
It is well if your friend, or mistress, be tent with these icular 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 clusions upon your stancy; they must not plain if the house be rather thin of suitors. Scylla must have broken off many excellent matches iime, if she insisted upon all, that loved her, loving her dogs also.
An excellent story to this moral is told of Merry, of Della Crus memory. In tender youth, he loved and courted a modest appao the Opera, in truth a dancer, who had won him by the artless trast between her manners and situation. She seemed to him a native violet, that had been transplanted by some rude act into that exotid artificial hotbed. Nor, in truth was she less genuine and sihan she appeared to him. He wooed and won this flower. Only for appearance sake, and for due honour to the brides relations, she craved that she might have the attendance of her friends and ki the approag solemnity. The request was too amiable not to be ceded; and in this solicitude for ciliating 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 affes else The m came; and at the Star and Garter, Rid -- the place appointed for the breakfasting -- apanied with one English friend, he impatiently awaited what reinforts 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 Seihe Prima Donna had sent her excuse. But the first and sed Buffa were there; and Signor Sc-----, Signora Ch----- , and Madame V-----, with a tless cavalcade beside of chorusers, figurantes, at the sight of whom Merry afterward [p 269] declared, that "then for the first time it st<dfn>藏书网</dfn>ruck 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 -- preseo 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 sea-coast, from which, shipping himself to America, he shortly after soled himself with a more genial mat the person of Miss Brunton; relieved from his intended father, and a bevy of painted Buffas for bridesmaids.
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