When these last addressed them, by name too,
and in that most conciliatory falsetto which
should find its way to a well-conditioned dog's
inmost heart, it was too often the case that such
advances were received with total indifference,
and even in some cases, I regret to say, with a
snap. As to any feeling for, or interest in, each
other, the prosperous dogs were utterly devoid
of both.

Among the unappreciated and lost dogs of
Holloway, on the other hand, there seemed a
sort of fellowship of misery, whilst their urbane
and sociable qualities were perfectly irresistible.
They were not conspicuous in the matter of
breed, it must be owned. A tolerable
Newfoundland dog, a deer-hound of some pretensions,
a setter, and one or two decent terriers, were
among the company; but for the most part the
architecture of these canine vagrants was
decidedly of the composite order. That particular
member of the dog tribe, with whom the reader
is so well acquainted, and who represent the great
and important family of the mongrels, was there
in all his— absence of— glory. Poor beast, with
his long tail left, not to please Sir Edwin
Landseer, but because nobody thought it worth while
to cut it, with his notched pendent ears, with
his heavy paws, his ignoble countenance, and
servile smile of conciliation, snuffing hither and
thither, running to and fro, undecided, uncared
for, not wanted, timid, supplicatory— there he
was, the embodiment of everything that is
pitiful, the same poor pattering wretch who follows
you along the deserted streets at night, and
whose eyes haunt you as you lie in bed after
you have locked him out of your house.

To befriend this poor unhappy animal a certain
band of humanely-disposed persons has
established this Holloway asylum, and a system has
been got to work which has actually, since
October, 1860, rescued at least a thousand lost
or homeless dogs from starvation. The modus
operand! adopted and recommended by the
committee of this remarkable institution for
preventing the poorer London dogs from going
to the dogs, is simply this: If it should happen
in the course of your walks about the metropolis
that that miserable cur which has been described
above should look into your face and find in it
a certain weakness called pity, and so should
attach himself to your boot-heels; if this should
befal you, and if you should prove to be of too
feeble a character to answer the poor cur's appeal
with a kick, you must straightway look about
for some vagrant man or boy— alas! they are as
common in this town as wandering dogs— and
propose to him that for a certain guerdon he
shall convey the dog to the asylum at Holloway,
where he will be certainly taken in, and a printed
receipt handed to the person who delivers
him at the gates. It is not, upon the whole,
considered a good plan to remunerate the vagrant
man to whom the vagrant dog has been confided
until his part of the contract has been performed,
and this same receipt has been obtained. For,
in the archives of the benevolent society whose
system we are examining, there are recorded
cases in which credulous persons have handed
over the dog and the reward together to some
"vagrom man," and somehow the animal has
never found its way to Holloway after all.

Once at the "Home," the dog has a number
tied round his neck similar to those which are
appended to our umbrellas at the National
Gallery, and which number corresponds with an
entry made by the keeper of the place in his
book, stating the date of the dog's arrival, and
describing his breed— if he has any— and, at all
events, his personal appearance as far as it is
describable.

The dog's individual case is then considered.
If he be ill, and his life be obviously not worth
preserving, he is humanely disposed of with a
little prussic acid. If, on the other hand, there
seem some reasonable prospect of his obtaining
a home hereafter, or if he appear to be of some
slight value, he is doctored, fed, and gradually
restored to health. Dogs are sometimes brought
to the asylum in a most piteous state of
exhaustion, and sometimes one of these poor little
things will, after receiving a carefully
administered meal, curl himself upon the straw and
go to sleep for twenty-four hours at a stretch.
From the greatest depths of prostration they
are recovered by judicious treatment in a
wonderfully short space of time. The society
has also employed persons occasionally, to go
about the streets and, in extreme cases, to
administer a dose of prussic acid to such diseased
and starving dogs as it has seemed merciful to
put a quick end to.

Now, really, among all the queer things which
a man might devote a whole lifetime to routing
out and which lie within the limits of this
metropolis, the existence of such an association as
this is one of the queerest. It is the kind of
institution which a very sensitive person who
had suffered acutely from witnessing the misery
of a starving animal would wish for, without
imagining for a moment that it could ever
seriously exist.

It does seriously exist, though. An
institution in this practical country founded on a
sentiment. The dogs are, for the most part, of
little or no worth. I don't think the Duke of
Beaufort would have much to say to the beagle
I saw sniffing about in the enclosure, and
I imagine that the stout man, who owned the
smaller terriers at the show, would have had
little to say to the black-and-tan specimens,
which mustered strong in numbers, but weak
in claims to admiration, in the shut-up house,
in which there were as many lost dogs as in the
enclosure outside. The thing owes its existence,
as has been said, to a sentiment. It asks for
but a very small donation, and does not enter
into competition with those charities which
would benefit the human sufferer. The "Home"
is a very small establishment, with nothing
imposing about it— nothing that suggests expense
or luxury. I think it is rather hard to laugh
this humane effort to scorn. If people really
think it wrong to spend a very very little money
on that poor cur whose face I frankly own often