alk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk more expressively
of dogs keeping men. I know a bull-dog in a shy corner of Hammersmith
who keeps a man. He keeps him up a yard, and makes him go to the
public-houses and lay wagers on him, and obliges him to lean against
posts and look at him, and forces him to neglect work for him, and keeps
him under rigid coercion. I once knew a fancy terrier who kept a
gentleman--a gentleman who had been brought up at Oxford, too. The dog
kept the gentleman entirely for his glorification, and the gentleman
never talked about anything but the terrier. This, however, was not in a
shy neighbourhood, and is a digression consequently.

There are a great many dogs in shy neighbourhoods who keep boys. I have
my eye on a mongrel in Somerstown who keeps three boys. He feigns that
he can bring down sparrows and unburrow rats (he can do neither), and he
takes the boys out on sporting pretences into all sorts of suburban
fields. He has likewise made them believe that he possesses some
mysterious knowledge of the art of fishing, and they consider themselves
incompletely equipped for the Hampstead ponds, with a pickle-jar and
wide-mouthed bottle, unless he is with them and barking tremendously.
There is a dog residing in the Borough of Southwark who keeps a blind
man. He may be seen most days, in Oxford Street, haling the blind man
away on expeditions wholly uncontemplated by, and unintelligible to, the
man; wholly of the dog's conception and execution. Contrariwise, when
the man has projects, the dog will sit down in a crowded thoroughfare
and meditate. I saw him yesterday, wearing the money-tray like an easy
collar, instead of offering it to the public, taking the man against his
will, on the invitation of a disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog
at Harrow--he was so intent on that direction. The north wall of
Burlington House Gardens, between the Arcade and the Albany, offers a
shy spot for appointments among blind men at about two or three o'clock
in the afternoon. They sit (very uncomfortably) on a sloping stone
there, and compare notes. Their dogs may always be observed, at the same
time, openly disparaging the men they keep, to one another, and settling
where they shall respectively take their men when they begin to move
again. At a small butcher's in a shy neighbourhood (there is no reason
for suppressing the name; it is by Notting Hill, and gives upon the
district called the Potteries