C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Dogs

By Sydney Smith (1771–1845)

NO, I don’t like dogs: I always expect them to go mad. A lady asked me once for a motto for her dog Spot. I proposed, “Out, damned Spot!” but she did not think it sentimental enough. You remember the story of the French marquise, who, when her pet lap-dog bit a piece out of her footman’s leg, exclaimed, “Ah, poor little beast! I hope it won’t make him sick.” I called one day on Mrs. ——, and her lap-dog flew at my leg and bit it. After pitying her dog, like the French marquise, she did all she could to comfort me by assuring me the dog was a Dissenter, and hated the Church, and was brought up in a Tory family. But whether the bite came from madness or Dissent, I knew myself too well to neglect it; and went on the instant to a surgeon and had it cut out, making a mem. on the way to enter that house no more.

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