DOGS AND THEIR DAY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4565, 6 November 1875, Page 2 (Supplement)

DOGS AND THEIR DAY.

(From the Globe.) The sentiment embodied in the old proverb that " every dog must have his day," appears to exercise an excessive influence upon the habits of society. It would be difficult to justify the saying in the sense in which it is most commonly interpreted. Probably the originator of this fragment of condensed wisdom never intended to imply that each male member of the human race was entitled to a space of days or years during which he should be free from law. And yet this appears to be the favorite reading of the proverb. It seems to be accepted—especially among those who aspire to be considered men of the world—that every young man, upon his entering into life, should be permitted to enjoy a certain season of grace and liberty before ho enters upon the serious business of existence, and that during that early chapter of his career, he should not be amenable to the accepted code of morals by which the remainder of his Ufe is to be governed. So general is the acceptance of this theory, that those who venture to dispute it run the risk of being regarded as puritanical, straitlaced, fanatic, if not cold-blooded and censorious. And yet it is an indisputable and most singular fact that the sternest condemnations of wildness in dogs who are having their day comes from the lips of dogs who have had their day. There are few spectacles more grotesque than that which is presented by a group of old dogs by turns wagging their sage heads over the extravagances of young dogs, and chuckling Over the wild doings of their own puppy days. The young dogs take their day variously. There is the Mr. Poker kind of a dog, whose early youth is devoted to loud clothing, expensive habits, driving fours-in-hand, filling kennels, and following the hounds in character costume, which exhibits the nature of his secret mind as plainly aa the pigskin illustrates Mr. Toole's proclivities in the "Steeplechase." This species of human dog is especially devoted to every variety of species in the canine dog. He will have dogs' heads or horses heads (by way of change) upon his riding whip, his walking stick, his umbrella, his meerschaum pipe, his breast-pin, and the buttons of his coat. On the whole he is a well-meaning, blunderheaded, reckless, but tolerably harmless puppy, and usually settles down to his humdrum duty in afterlife without the loss of many limb 3 or the accumulation of much remorse. I Since the time when the notorious Marquis of Waterford set the puppy fashion, and uniformed policemen superseded the antiquated Charlies, rendering the buffeting of such guardians of the peace more perilous than pleasent ; and since magistrates ceased to regard the wrenching of knockers and bell-handles, and the breaking of street lamps, as the natural consequences of exuberance of spirits in the aristocracy, the public at large have suffered less, and, in consequence, sympathised less, with the enjoyments of this particular school. It may be seriously questioned whether the enforcementof acertainoutwardobservdnceof propiety upon this class of young dogs has not been accompanied by an increased vioiousness ; and there would be room for an instructive discussion of the applicability of Milton's dictum, that " publicity is the cure of social evils," to the case of the youthful Poker. Sheridan's twin portraits of Charles Surface and his brother Joseph were almost prophetic of the contrast between the rake of the Regency, and the disguised rake of later and more "proper" times. It is possible that the worship of propriety, which has growingly prevailed in English Society for two generations, has increased the number of Joseph Surfaces while it has diminished the Charleses. Your genuine young dog is naturally frank, llepress his vices and thsy grow corrupt; the fever checked in youth may poison the whole afterlife. So that one might argue that the dog who has not had his day openly, rapidly, and in duo season, will have it darkly, out of time, and poisonously. So much for moralising. One may afford to acknowledge with a certain sort of admiration the right royal way in which the dog of pure breed takes his day ; but there arc so many mongrel dogs that the balance of sentiment inclines too often to contempt. Amongst those who survive and come to old dogdom tho curious observer will find three broadly-marked and distinct classes, and from them' he may gather the moral of many modes of passing the heyday of life. There is the old dog who gloats over tho sins of his youth, and delights to exam'erato them in detail, while he flatters himself with the fallacious notion that he is earning the praise of his heavers. There is also the eminently moral old clog, whoso ponderous and ceaseless arraignment of young dogs moro than implies his own undue familiarity with the lowest vices of tho vilest youth, and | so overreaches himself. These _ two are companion relics of mongrel puppyism. Into one or other of these specimens every low-class dog who revels in vice for its own sake inevitably developes when he has had his day. Vice and hypocrisy alike produce the Pharisaic old dog. Tho ideal of the apostles of physical Christianity which tho romancist embodied in

Guy Livingstone is degraded in modern city life into heroes of the prize-fighting and wifebeating type which furnished a leading figure in Mr. Wiflrie Collins' "Manand Wife." Unless some retrogressive wave—unlikely to visit us at a time when change is laboriously turned away from all that is old, and there is an overweening desire for the new, with too little regard for the inherent good —should carry us back to the manners of a past generation, it is to be feared that the grand loyal race of fine old dogs, whoso stories of their day were full of life and devoid alike of vulgarity and cruelty will soon become extinct. As there is little to remind us o£ George Warrington aud Pendennis in the young dogs who are having their day, so there is little hope that the type of Colonel Newcome and the Major will be reproduced in the old clogs of the coming generation.