HER THREE TEN-THOUSAND-DOLLAR DOGS.
By T.
A WOMAN in an Eastern city, according to the New York Journal, has three French bulldogs, valued at $10,000 each. And it is quite likely that if the truth were known, this woman would not sell her dogs at any price. These dogs are not valuable for any practical usefulness, but they have certain “marks of good blood” that classes them among the canine aristocracy. And in order that these “high-born” dogs may enjoy everything that pertains to their “station in life,” their owner provides them with a footman and maid. These servants of the favored dogs must be ever ready to give them all the attentions usually bestowed upon human lords. They have their bath in perfumed water every morning, their maid having this part of the program in charge. The dogs have breakfast, luncheon, and dinner from the same expensive viands that are supplied to their owner. Their footman takes them for a walk three times a day, and on returning they are each time carefully rubbed down. One of the most skilful physicians in New York City is their medical attendant. They wear massive collars that are worth a small fortune. Their wardrobe, mostly of foreign importation, is bought quarterly and costs about $100 per dog, or $400 a year each. And among some of the rest of the expensive luxuries that these dogs, of noble birth tho they be, can hardly appreciate fully, may be mentioned a painting of them by a celebrated artist. It seems passing strange that full-grown women of mature years could so fully give themselves to such daily rounds of devotion to dogs, and that, too, at a time when all our cities and much of the country as well, are filled with the greatest want and destitution. And if one woman only was devoting herself to such expensive nonsense, it would hardly be worth mentioning. But there are hundreds of the very wealthy who are expending their money in this way. It is hard to think that those who are doing it are so far gone that their consciences do not continually upbraid them for such a waste of time and money. And how literally are these things fulfilling that most remarkable prophecy of James in regard to the “rich men” who are “heaping treasure together for the last days.” Of them he says, “Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.” James 5:5. Certainly those who are so lavishly spending their means on dogs are “wanton” in the extreme. And by comparing the first few verses of this fifth chapter of James with the doings of our time, one must be impressed that one of the evidences that we are in the “last days” is very clearly being fulfilled. Sensible men have no patience with such wastefulness when so many are in distress because of a lack of the mere necessities of life, and how must the just and merciful God view it? The limit of His forbearance must soon be reached, and then the end will come. There is no time to lose in warning the world of its approaching doom. T.