ire and brimstone, and demanded the "unquestionable" article, no other
being genuine, please observe trade mark.

Among Dr. Brown's contributions to the humorous study of dogs, "Rab," of
course, holds the same place as Marjorie among his sketches of children.
But if his "Queen Mary's Child Garden," the description of the little
garden in which Mary Stuart did _not_ play when a child, is second to
"Marjorie," so "Our Dogs" is a good second to "Rab." Perhaps Dr. Brown
never wrote anything more mirthful than his description of the sudden
birth of the virtue of courage in Toby, a comic but cowardly mongrel, a
cur of low degree.

"Toby was in the way of hiding his culinary bones in the small gardens
before his own and the neighbouring doors. Mr. Scrymgeour, two doors
off, a bulky, choleric, red-faced man--_torvo vultu_--was, by law of
contrast, a great cultivator of flowers, and he had often scowled Toby
into all but non-existence by a stamp of his foot and a glare of his
eye. One day, his gate being open, in walks Toby with a huge bone,
and making a hole where Scrymgeour had two minutes before been
planting some precious slip, the name of which on paper and on a stick
Toby made very light of, substituted his bone, and was engaged
covering it, or thinking he was covering it up with his shovelling
nose, when S. spied him through the inner glass door, and was out upon
him, like the Assyrian, with a terrific _gowl_. I watched them.
Instantly Toby made at him with a roar too, and an eye more torve than
Scrymgeour's, who, retreating without reserve, fell prostrate, there
is reason to believe, in his own lobby. Toby contented himself with
proclaiming his victory at the door, and, returning, finished his bone-
planting at his leisure; the enemy, who had scuttled behind the glass
door, glared at him. From this moment Toby was an altered dog. Pluck
at first sight was lord of all . . . That very evening he paid a visit
to Leo, next door's dog, a big tyrannical bully and coward . . . To
him Toby paid a visit that very evening, down into his den, and walked
about, as much as to say, 'Come on, Macduff'; but Macduff did not come
on."

This story is one of the most amazing examples of instant change of
character on record, and disproves the sceptical remark that "no one was
ever converted, except prize-fighters, and colonels in the army." I am
sorry to say that