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Updated: May 3, 2025
An old gentleman who filled in her family the office of "the /chevalier/" in a French one; namely, who told stories; not too long, and did not challenge you for interrupting them; who had a good air, and unexceptionable pedigree, a turn for wit, literature, note-writing, and the management of lap-dogs; who could attend /Madame/ to auctions, plays, courts, and the puppet-show; who had a right to the best company, but would, on a signal, give up his seat to any one the pretty /capricieuse/ whom he served might select from the worst, in short a very useful, charming personage, "vastly" liked by all, and "prodigiously" respected by none, this gentleman, I say, by name Mr.
If they are unhappy enough to receive no attention for the sake of amiability, they are soon seized with ennui; they fall back upon religion, upon the cultivation of pets, cats, lap-dogs, and other fancies which are no more offensive than their devoutness.
His last letters consisted of nothing but outpourings of the most sentimental love for his absent friend, and were literally wet with tears. There are natures extremely attached to home like lap-dogs. The meeting of the friends was enthusiastic. Within two days everything was as before and even duller than before.
Youth free to find knowledge and laughter? Willingness to sift the sanctified lies? Or creamy-skinned fat women, smeared with grease and chalk, gorgeous in the skins of beasts and the bloody feathers of slain birds, playing bridge with puffy pink-nailed jeweled fingers, women who after much expenditure of labor and bad temper still grotesquely resemble their own flatulent lap-dogs?
I saw an ass at the Corps de Garde this morning laden with violins and music, and a female prisoner seldom arrives without her complement of bandboxes. Embarrassed, stifled as we are by our numbers, it does not prevent a daily importation of lap-dogs, who form as consequential a part of the community in a prison, as in the most superb hotel.
Adoption, with us, is a kind of domestic luxury, akin to the keeping of any other pets, such as lap-dogs and canaries. It is a species of self-indulgence which those who can afford it give themselves when fortune has proved unpropitious, an artificial method of counteracting the inequalities of fate.
Rags or the daintiest finery will be as one to us then; the ambergris of the boudoir will breathe an odor of death and dry bones; and suppose there is a heart there in that mud, not one of you but would make mock of it, not so much as a memory will you spare to us. Is not our existence precisely the same whether we live in a fine mansion with lap-dogs to tend, or sort rags in a workhouse?
I thought you suffered the company of that empty-headed fop as you suffered your lap-dogs the trivial appendage of a fine lady's state. Had I supposed that there was anything serious in your liking that you could think him worth anger or tears should have ordered your life differently, and he would have had no place in it." "Tyrant! tyrant!" "You astound me, Hyacinth!
And yet this dog was not on the footing of those hermaphroditical animals, who may be reckoned among the number of waiting-women, who air your shifts, comb your lap-dogs, examine your noses with magnifying glasses, in order to squeeze out the worms, clean your tooth-brushes, sweeten your handkerchiefs, and soften waste paper for your occasions.
Any tender-hearted girl might have stood thus surrounded by helpless things that pity had endeared, but few would have regarded them with an expression like that which Sylvia wore. Moor spoke before Mark could dispose of his smoke. "This is a great improvement upon the boudoir full of lap-dogs, worsted-work and novels, Miss Sylvia.
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