The world makes few graver mistakes than in supposing a man must necessarily possess all the cardinal virtues because he has a big dog and some dirty children.

We know a butcher whose children are not merely dirty—they are fearfully and wonderfully besmirched by the hand of an artist. He has, in addition, a big dog with a tendency to dropsy, who flies at you across the street with such celerity that he outruns his bark by a full second, and you are warned of your danger only after his teeth are buried in your leg. And yet the owner of these children and father of this dog is no whit better, to all appearance, than a baker who has clean brats and a mild poodle. He is not even a good butcher; he hacks a rib and lacerates a sirloin. He talks through his nose, which turns up to such an extent that the voice passes right over your head, and you have to get on a table to tell whether he is slandering his dead wife or swearing at yourself.

If that man possessed a thousand young ones, exaltedly nasty, and dogs enough to make a sub-Atlantic cable of German sausage, you would find it difficult to make us believe in him. In fact, we look upon the big dog test of morality as a venerable mistake—natural but erroneous; and we regard dirty children as indispensable in no other sense than that they are inevitable.