Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 December 1892 — The Dude and the Mad Dog. [ARTICLE]

The Dude and the Mad Dog.

“ You cannot always judge a book by the cover,” said Major Tom Speedwell at the Laclede. “If any man despises a dude 1 do. lam prejudiced against any man who uses perfumery, wears a silk hat, a stand-up collar, or carries a cane. When I find a man doing all those ridiculous things at one and the same time it is all I can do to refrain from personal violence. I yearn to hit him, just on general principles. Add to these offenses against the canons of horse sense a button-hole bouquet, a curled mustache and a lisp, and my fingers fairly tingle for a grip of his neck, my toes for a coup de grace. “Yet I saw just that kind of a biped perform an act of heroism that made me think better of mankind.' “I was walking down Madison street, Chicago, last summer, when there was suddenly raised that most appalling of all cries of terror, ‘Mad dog!’ An old lady and a little girl were crossing the street, down the center of which a big mastiff was plunging, with bloodshot eyes and foaming mouth, pursued by a couple of officers. He made straight for the old lady, caught her dress and dragged her down. He then sprang at her throat, but before he reached it a youngster tricked out in the toggery I abhor had him by the neck. “The beast raged like a demon, but the dude held him fast until an officer came up and put a bullet through his head. He then picked up his silk tile, brushed it with his elbsw, and said, with an idiotic lisp: ‘Every dog in the thty thould be killed; every body that keepth a dog in the thity thould be hanged.’ Hix' was sound as his nerve. I went home and wrote with apiece of chalk across the headboard of my bed: ‘A man may dress like a cad and look like a fool, and still have sand and sense to give a way.* •—St. Louis Globe-Dem-ocrat