YOUNG MR. COFFINBERRY BUYS A DOG.

PEOPLE lifted their eyes above their mufflers one raw November morning as they walked down Jefferson Street, and smiled and grinned, and laughed even unto hysterical weeping, as they watched the toilsome and uncertain progress of a patient young man who had bought a dog and was leading his property home. It was a nice enough kind of a dog, one of the kind of dogs whose mouth begins back close to the shoulders. It had dreadfully long legs, this dog, with great knobs of knees, and its restless tail had a dejected droop, as though the dog was just heart-broken at the idea of leaving his old home. The young man was leading the dog along with a very long string, one end whereof was tied around the dog’s neck. The only trouble with the dog was that he was young. He had not attained the years of discretion. He couldn’t trot placidly along thinking of things. He couldn’t walk at his master’s heels with a face as solemn as though he expected to be sausage before Thanksgiving Day. He was a nervous, fidgety, inquisitive dog, and he tried to read all the signs, and crawl under all the wagons, and dive between every body’s legs as he went along. And the first thing he knew, he had a contract on hand that was much too big for him, and he was just about crazy over it, for he wasn’t the dog to give up, if he was young, and he stuck to his work like a Trojan. And this was what made people laugh. The young man who was leading him had just lifted his hat to some lady acquaintances who were passing when the dog, looking up, misunderstood the motion and thought his master was going to hit him a diff with that hat. With the natural instinct of self-preservation, the shy, timid young thing dashed between the young man’s legs and ran to the length of his tether; then he gave a terrified howl and darted back in the opposite direction, going outside the young man’s right leg. Then, with a frightened yelp it sprang back between the legs again, circled around and came down outside the left leg. Then it ran rapidly around the young man, dived through his legs again and ran around him once and a half in an opposite direction, and his last maneuver closed the performance, for it wound the dog completely up, with his frightened face laid close against the young man’s knee. Mr. Coffinberry blushed to his ears, and replacing his hat, began the task of extricating himself from the toils that artful dog had cast around him. But the animal’s confidence was not yet entirely restored, for at every movement of Mr. Coffinberry’s hands, he squirmed and writhed and pulled back on the string until he was choked, and coughed and gasped in a manner most terrifying to the people not thoroughly acquainted with the symptoms of hydrophobia, and the young man was naturally as badly frightened, when these paroxysms became very lively, as was the dog itself. It was fifteen minutes before the snarl was disentangled. Then before they had gone half a block further, that dog, after having rushed into and been forcibly, and in some instances rather petulantly, dragged out of every doorway on the line of march, incontinently shot down a cellar grating, where he was immediately clawed and scalped by a cat as big as a soap box, and was also nearly garroted by his master drawing him up out of the cellar by the cord, for all the world as though he was a well bucket. About thirty steps further on, the dog ran between a clergyman’s legs, got frightened and ran around him once and then dived between his master’s legs, then rushed out toward the curb stone, but changing his mind, circled back and scooped in a blushing school teacher, and then gazed upon the mischief he had wrought, with hideous howls. The bystanders thought they never could get out of that entanglement. The minister declared alternatively that “he never did” and moreover that “well he never;” the blushing school teacher remarked “good gracious,” and suggested also, “dear me,” and, furthermore, “well, now;” and the young man said something about the dog being damp, which was highly improbable as the morning was very raw. By dint of a great deal of persuasion and pulling and hauling, however, in which they were greatly assisted by the dog, the unhappy trio were finally separated and went their way, making ineffectual efforts to look unconcerned. Then the dog wrapped himself up around a lamp-post; then he got through the hind wheel of a grocer’s wagon five or six times, back and forth, around a different spoke every time, while his master was talking to the grocer, and the latter drove off before the young man noticed what arrangements his dog had concluded with the wheel, and Jefferson Street was edified by the spectacle of a dog wound up to a wagon wheel and revolving rapidly with it, while a young man of pleasing address ran alongside the wheel and added his agonized appeals to the half-stifled wails of the hanging pup. They got the wagon stopped and got the pup loose, and the young man, wearied with the long struggle, resolutely turned toward the store, and walked rapidly away, the unhappy dog lying prone on his back, gasping and pawing the air, while the boys who witnessed the strange procession made the welkin ring with cries of “Dog’s a chokin! mister, yer dog’s a chokin!” But young Mr. Coffinberry knew that so long as his dog was helplessly sprawled on his back he couldn’t wrap the inhabitants of Burlington up in perspiring, distracted groups, so he kept on the even tenor of his way, and when he finally untied the string from the animal’s neck and turned him loose in the store, there wasn’t so much hair on that dog’s back as would make a tooth brush.