Page:Diary of a Pilgrimage (1891).pdf/198

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196
EVERGREENS.

and bring him home always thoroughly exhausted. You stick to that for a month or two, regular, and you'll have him like a little child."

"Um!—seems to me that I'm going to get more training over this job than anybody else," muttered my uncle, as he thanked the man and left the shop; "but I suppose it's got to be done. Wish I'd never had the d—— dog now!"

So religiously every evening, my uncle would fasten a long chain to that poor dog, and drag him away from his happy home with the idea of exhausting him; and the dog would come back as fresh as paint, my uncle behind him, panting and clamouring for brandy.

My uncle said he should never have dreamed there could have been such stirring times in this prosaic nineteenth century as he had experienced, training that dog.

Oh, the wild, wild scamperings over the breezy common, the dog trying to catch a swallow, and my uncle, unable