"You are right, Dobeen," said the Professor. "Put a wise dog, and a foolish, vicious master together. The brute exhibits more tenderness and thoughtfulness than the man. In the latter, even the mantle of our largest charity is insufficient to cover his multitude of sins, while the skin of his faithful animal wraps nothing but honest virtue. The dog, having once suffered from poison, avoids tempting pieces of meat thenceforward, when proffered by strange hands, but the man steeps his brain in poison again and again--or as often as he can lay hold of it. While grasping the deadly thing, he sees, stretching out from the bar room door, a down grade road, with open graves at the end, and frightened madmen, chased by the blue devils and murder and misery, rushing madly toward them. These swallow their victims, as the hatches of a prison ship do the galley slave, and close upon them to give them up only when the jailer, the angel of the resurrection, shall unlock the tombs, and calls their occupants to judgment. Does the sight appall and bring him to his senses? No, he crowds among the terrors, and takes to his bosom the same venomous serpent that he has seen sting so many thousands to death before him. And yet people give to the brute's wisdom the name of instinct, and call man's madness wisdom." "But, your honors," interposed Dobeen, "I shall be after losing my dog entirely, unless yez lave off interruptin' me, an' let me finish my story." "Go on, Shamus, go on!" we all cried with one breath.