“Ah, me!” said Tommy, “I haven’t had many chances to smell anything else for the last two years, and the rats I _have_ had, haven’t been the corn-fed article we used to hunt together down at Baker’s farm, I can tell you. How I miss ’em! And the cream, and buttermilk, and sausages and--” “Great Scott! Tommy,” cried Fido, “don’t ever mention sausage to me again! If you only knew--!” “Pardon me, Fido. In my glowing recollection of pleasures past, I forgot that you have been living in the city for some time and have probably long since discovered that all is not gold that glitters. There’s many a tragedy imprisoned within the cover of the city sausage. And yet, Fido, such reflections should be valuable to you as inculcating a lesson of Christian humility. If this be not enough, look at me, and think how ephemeral is terrestrial glory. I was once as thou art--fat, pampered, happy, and with never a thought of the morrow. Ah, my boy! who can control his own destiny; who can govern the mysterious workings of fate?” “Well, Tommy,” said Fido, “you evidently haven’t regulated yours to any large extent. If you have, you’d better let somebody else take the job, for you don’t seem to be making a brilliant success of it. But tell me, what has brought you to this? You were as sleek and dandified a fellow as ever wore whiskers when I saw you last. Don’t you remember the time the boys got up that serenade for you and sang ‘Oh he’s a dude, a dandy dude!’ until the roofs were covered with boot jacks a foot deep? Whew! but weren’t you mad though?” “Heigho!” sighed Tommy, “if anybody should serenade me in that fashion nowadays, I don’t think I could accuse him of being personal--I look like ‘the last run o’ shad.’ But you have asked me for my history since we were on the farm together. If you have patience to listen to the yarn of a miserable outcast, I’ll gladly tell you my story. My appearance makes it unnecessary for me to remark that I am no longer Thomas Baker, Esquire, but Tommy the Tramp, as the haughty young Duchesse de Maltesa, who lives in the next block, calls me, and you are likely to lose caste if you are seen talking with me in public. Let’s make a sneak into the alley over yonder. There’s a big dry-goods box over there behind that brick barn where we can talk without fear of interruption.” “Why, Tommy Baker!” said Fido indignantly, drawing himself up to his full height, his eyes flashing fire. “What do you take me for--a man? I’ll have you to understand that I never went back on a friend in my life. Do you suppose I care a straw for other people’s opinions? Not a bit of it! I’m all wool and a yard wide, and don’t you forget it. If it wasn’t necessary to wear this dandy trash in order to hold my job, I’d tear it off in a holy minute. Not another word, sir!--or I’ll roll in the mud and prove to you that I am your old pard--_semper fidelis_, and all that--even if I go to the pound for it.”