In fact, a time comes to every healthy man when he wants a dog, just as a time comes when he wants a wife; and Harry’s dog was dead.  By consequence, Harry was in the state of sensitive affection and desolation to which a promising new object makes the most moving appeal.  The departed dog (Bruce by name) had been a Saint Bernard; and Deacon Hurst found one of the puppies to have so much the expression of countenance of the late Bruce that he named him Bruce on the spot—­a little before Harry joined the group.  Harry did not at first recognize this resemblance, but he grew to see it; and, combined with the dog’s affectionate disposition, it softened his heart.  By the time he told his mother he was come to quoting Hurst’s adjectives as his own.

“Beauties, mother,” says Harry, with sparkling eyes; “the markings are perfect—­couldn’t be better; and their heads are shaped just right!  You can’t get such watch-dogs in the world!  And, for all their enormous strength, gentle as a lamb to women and children!  And, mother, one of them looks like Bruce!”

“I suppose they would want to be housedogs,” says Mrs. Lossing, a little dubiously, but looking fondly at Harry’s handsome face; “you know, somehow, all our dogs, no matter how properly they start in a kennel, end by being so hurt if we keep them there that they come into the house.  And they are so large, it is like having a pet lion about.”

“These dogs, mother, shall never put a paw in the house.”

“Well, I hope just as I get fond of them they will not have the distemper and die!” said Mrs. Lossing; which speech Harry rightly took for the white flag of surrender.

That evening he went to find Hurst and clinch the bargain.  As it happened, Hurst was away, driving an especially important political personage to an especially important political council.  The day following was a Sunday; but, by this time, Harry was so bent upon obtaining the dogs that he had it in mind to go to Hurst’s house for them in the afternoon.  When Harry wants anything, from Saint Bernards to purity in politics, he wants it with an irresistible impetus!  If he did wrong, his error was linked to its own punishment.  But this is anticipating, if not presuming; I prefer to leave Harry Lossing’s experience to paint its own moral without pushing.  The event that happened next was Harry’s pulling out his check-book and beginning to write a check, remarking, with a slight drooping of his eyelids, “Best catch the deacon’s generosity on the fly, or it may make a home run!”

Then he let the pen fall on the blotter, for he had remembered the day.  After an instant’s hesitation he took a couple of hundred-dollar bank-notes out of a drawer (I think they were gifts for his two sisters on Christmas day, for he is a generous brother; and most likely there would be some small domestic joke about engravings to go with them); these he placed in the right-hand pocket of his waistcoat.  In his left-hand waistcoat pocket were two five-dollar notes.