in particular. We call him the
firemen's dog.' 'The firemen's dog!' I replied. 'Why so? Has he no
master?' 'No, sir,' rejoined the fireman; 'he calls none of us master,
though we are all of us willing enough to give him a night's lodging
and a pennyworth of meat. But he won't stay long with any of us. His
delight is to be at all the fires in London; and, far or near, we
generally find him on the road as we are going along, and sometimes,
if it is out of town, we give him a lift. I don't think there has been
a fire for these two or three years past which he has not been at.'

"The communication was so extraordinary, that I found it difficult to
believe the story, until it was confirmed by the concurrent testimony
of several other firemen. None of them, however, were able to give any
account of the early habits of the dog, or to offer any explanation of
the circumstances which led to this singular propensity.

"Some time afterwards, I was again called up in the night to a fire in
the village in which I resided (Camberwell, in Surrey), and to my
surprise here I again met with 'the firemen's dog,' still alive and
well, pursuing, with the same apparent interest and satisfaction, the
exhibition of that which seldom fails to bring with it disaster and
misfortune, oftentimes loss of life and ruin. Still, he called no man
master, disdained to receive bed or board from the same hand more than
a night or two at a time, nor could the firemen trace out his
resting-place."

Such was the account of this interesting animal as it appeared in the
newspapers, to which were shortly afterwards appended several
circumstances communicated by a fireman at one of the police offices.
A magistrate having asked him whether it was a fact that the dog was
present at most of the fires that occurred in the metropolis, the
fireman replied that he never knew "Tyke," as he was called, to be
absent from a fire upon any occasion that he (the fireman) attended
himself. The magistrate said the dog must have an extraordinary
predilection for fires. He then asked what length of time he had been
known to possess that propensity. The fireman replied that he knew
Tyke for the last nine years; and although he was getting old, yet the
moment the engines were about, Tyke was to be seen as active as ever,
running off in the direction of the fire. The magistrate inquired
whether the dog lived with any particular fireman. The fireman replied
that Tyke liked one fire