“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