Page:My last friend, dog Dick (IA mylastfrienddogd00deam).pdf/22

14 the honor of a public advertisement, offering a miserable reward,—the highest point in the fortunes of a progeny of vagabonds, whose hunger was never satisfied, miserable servants of the glebe wagon, and of the dancing victims of the whip of the somer-sault athletes. And it may be that my dear Dick is the only one among hundreds that has known the sweetness of a lump of sugar, or assumed the dignity of a couch of cotton.

O, poor Dick! Who knows what might have passed through my hands, pocket-books, and satchels? Perhaps I have been fitted with gloves made from the skins of his ancestors.

Who knows if any one of the dogs of whose adventures I have read in the newspapers, an unknown dog connected with solving the mystery of a crime, may have been one of his forefathers? Who can tell which one among the many poor beasts belonging to nobody, a dog that I have seen in spasms on the street, encircled by a ring of curious spectators, a dog maimed by a carriage, or dying of hunger or old age,—may not have been a remote father of this my little friend who was predestined to occupy such a large portion of my thoughts