A Certain Popular Fallacy.
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.
