Should the unhappy infant find it difficult to resist the effect which
this glimpse of the area of freedom produces, and step beyond the gate,
from that moment he is utterly demoralized. The Boys' Dog owns him
body and soul. Straightway he is led by the deceitful brute into the
unhallowed circle of his Bohemian masters. Sometimes the unfortunate
boy, if he be very small, turns up eventually at the station-house as
a lost child. Whenever I meet a stray boy in the street looking utterly
bewildered and astonished, I generally find a Boys' Dog lurking on the
corner. When I read the advertisements of lost children, I always add
mentally to the description, "was last seen in company with a Boys'
Dog." Nor is his influence wholly confined to small boys. I have seen
him waiting patiently for larger boys on the way to school, and by
artful and sophistical practices inducing them to play truant. I have
seen him lying at the school-house door, with the intention of enticing
the children on their way home to distant and remote localities. He has
led many an unsuspecting boy to the wharves and quays by assuming the
character of a water-dog, which he was not, and again has induced others
to go with him on a gunning excursion by pretending to be a sporting
dog, in which quality he was knowingly deficient. Unscrupulous,
hypocritical, and deceitful, he has won many children's hearts by
answering to any name they might call him, attaching himself to their
persons until they got into trouble, and deserting them at the very
moment they most needed his assistance. I have seen him rob small
school-boys of their dinners by pretending to knock them down by
accident; and have seen larger boys in turn dispossess him of his
ill-gotten booty for their own private gratification. From being a
tool, he has grown to be an accomplice; through much imposition, he
has learned to impose on others; in his best character, he is simply a
vagabond's vagabond.