KINKS!—"DIRTY DOGS"—THE BARKING DOG THAT WAS FOUND DEAD IN THE YARD—THE DOG THAT BARKED HIMSELF TO DEATH.

"The hallucinations of Smith," said Spalding, after we had settled the matter of the pipes, and were enjoying a fresh pull at the weed, "as described by the Doctor, remind me of a slight attack of fever which I had some months ago, and from which I recovered partly through the aid of the Doctor\'s medicine, and partly through the kindness of a young friend of mine; and of the strange \'kinks,\' as you call them, which got into my head between the fever and the Doctor\'s opiates. Things were strangely mixed up, the real and the unreal grouped and mingled in a manner that gave to all the just proportions and appearance of sober actualities. I remember them as distinctly, and they made as deep and abiding impression upon my mind as if I had seen them all. They are impressed as palpably and indelibly upon my memory now as any actual events of my life."

"Well," said the Doctor, "suppose you give us one of these \'kinks,\' while our pipes are being smoked out, as an \'opiate\' to send us all to sleep."

"Be it understood, then," Spalding began, "that I like dogs in a general way. They are plain dealing, honest, trusty folk in the aggregate, albeit, there are what Tom Benton calls, \'dirty dogs.\' These, however, are mostly human canines, dogs that walk on two legs, and wear clothes. Such curs I don\'t like. But there are such, and they may be seen and heard, barking, and snarling, and snapping in their envy, at honest peoples\' heels every day. Let them bark. Mr. Benton was right. They are \'dirty dogs.\' But a dog that looks you honestly and frankly in the face, that stands by his master and friend, in all times of trial, in sorrow as in joy, in adversity as in prosperity, in dark days as in bright days, always cheerful, always sincere, earnest, and truthful, and so that his kindness be met, always happy, I like. He is your true nobility of nature below the human. But there are \'curs of low degree;\' dogs of neither genial instinct nor breeding; senseless animals, that belie the noble nature of their species, are living libels upon their kind. There was one of these over against my rooms, at the time of the sickness I speak of. I say was for thanks to the fates, he is among the things that have been; he belongs to history, has been wiped out.

"He was a barking dog. When the moon was in the sky, he barked at the moon. When only the stars shone out, he barked at the stars; when clouds shut in both moon and stars, he barked at the clouds; and when the darkness was so deep and black as to obscure even the clouds, he barked at the darkness. Through all the long night he barked, barked, barked! It was not a bark of defiance, nor of alarm, nor of astonishment, nor of warning. It was not a note of danger, breaking the hush of midnight, saying that thieves were abroad, that murder was on its stealthy mission, or that the wolf was on the walk. It was a senseless, monotonous, idiotic bow, wow! Nothing more, nothing less.

"All Monday night, as I lay tossing upon a bed of pain, when fever was coursing through my veins, and every pulse went plunging like a steam engine from the gorged heart to every extremity, and my brain was like molten lead, I heard that terrible bark! It was my evil genius, my destiny. It mingled in every feverish dream, became the embodiment of every vision. I measured the periods of its recurrence by the clock that stands in the corner of our room. I counted the tickings of its silence, and I counted the tickings of its continuance. Every swing of the pendulum became a distinct period of existence. Minutes, hours, were nothing. Forty-four tickings, I said, and that bow, wow! will be heard again! Fifteen tickings, I said, and it will cease; and so I went on until the hours seemed to spread out into a boundless ocean of time. That dog somehow became mixed up with that old family clock that stood in the corner. I heard him scratching and climbing up among the weights, writhing and twisting his way among the machinery, till there, looking out through the face of that old family clock, distinct and palpable as the sun at noonday, or the moon in a cloudless night, I saw the ogre head of that dog; his great glassy, fishy eyes, his half drooping, half erect ears, his slavering jaws, and as he gazed in a stupid meaningless stare upon me, uttered his everlasting bow, wow! Tell me that the room was dark; that not a ray of light penetrated the closed doors or the curtained windows. What of that? That dog\'s head, I repeat, was there; I saw it, if I ever saw the sun, the moon or the bright stars. I saw it staring at me through all the gloom, all the thick darkness, and I heard its terrible bow, wow! \'Get out!\' I shouted in horror.

"\'What\'s the matter?\' cried my wife, springing up in an ecstasy of terror.

"\'Drive out that dog,\' I replied.

"\'What dog?\' she inquired.

"\'There,\' I replied, \'that dog there, in the clock with his great staring, glassy eyes; drive him out!\'

"She lighted the gas, and as............