Another very good instance of cunning, produced by a long course of back-slum life and manners, is given by the writer from whom the foregoing anecdote is taken, respecting “a Dog--a low-looking villain, blind of one eye, and, in consequence of his nefarious propensities, with never more than three sound legs to run on, who haunts the neighbourhood of Drury Lane. Nobody owns the brute, but he has contrived to scrape acquaintance with a kind-hearted cheesemonger, who keeps a shop there. I have the worthy tradesman’s own word for it that he always knows when the officer on the look-out for vagrant Dogs is about by the sudden appearance of Tinker and his peculiar behaviour. At ordinary times disdaining to be anything better than a Dog of the streets, his custom is to salute the cheesemonger from the pavement, and by a bark and a wag of his stump of a tail solicit an unconsidered trifle of bone or bacon-rind; but on the special occasion alluded to his tactics are quite different. He enters the shop with a sober and business-like air, and lies down on a mat by the parlour-door, with paws extended and his tail beating a contented tattoo on the floor, as though since his puppyhood that had been his home and abiding-place, and he had known and desired to know no other. It is a joke between the officer and the cheesemonger, and the former enters the shop and loudly demands to know if ‘that Dog lives here.’ I have not as yet had the pleasure of witnessing it, but the cheesemonger informs me that it is ‘as good as a play’ to observe the reassuring blink of his only eye which, at this juncture, Tinker bestows on the policeman, immediately afterwards curling himself round for a doze, as though to say, ‘Let this convince you.’ Tinker’s stay, however, is not protracted. As soon as, according to his calculation, the coast is clear, he is off, as unexpectedly as he came, and until he is again hard pressed by the law never thinks of crossing the cheesemonger’s threshold.”