Next to the beauty of its girls my little Western home is noted for two
things--the ferocity of its dogs and its bountiful provision for
assuaging an attack of thirst. For the latter there are fifteen houses,
ten of which have licences and the rest back-doors. We are by birth a
temperate people, but there is much salt in the air.
Our dogs are very like ourselves, as peaceable and well-conducted as can
be, except when some rascal takes up their challenge and makes faces at
them or trails a tail of too much pretension and too suddenly in their
neighbourhood. Then the fur is apt to fly.
"What a degrading spectacle a dog-fight is!" Moriarty, who takes up the
collection in church and has thus a semi-ecclesiastical status in life,
which shows itself in his speech, said this to me only last evening.
There were about a hundred of us trying to hide this degrading spectacle
from the police and other innocent people, and Moriarty had just lost
three-and-sixpence on Casey's dog. "A degrading spectacle indeed," said
I. "If Casey's dog had held out two minutes longer he had the other dog
beat. I am disappointed in Casey's dog." It _was_ degrading, and I am
glad I had only half-a-crown on it. So I paid up to our collector of
rates and taxes and came home.
This little incident made me think of Billy O'Brien, our next-door
neighbour. Billy had one passion in life, and that was the rearing of a
dog that could whip any combination in the vicinity.
Billy said life wasn't worth living if he could not walk in the streets
without some neighbour's dog beating his. Billy had failed hitherto, and
this is not surprising to one who knows the dogs of Ballybun. They are
Irish terriers to a dog, and all of them living instances of the
doctrine of the survival of the fittest. The air of Ballybun is bad for
a dog with a weak chest who thinks he has a strong one. Billy
experimented with many breeds and had many glimpses of success, but a
Ballybun dog always put an end to his experiments.
Last year Billy thought he had achieved his aim at last. When he
returned from the sea-side he brought with him a powerful dog of unknown
breed and of the most colossal ugliness. He confided to me that he would
not let him out on the street until his education was complete, "and
then," said he, "there will be only one dog in the Ballybun census." I
had my doubts, as I know the local dog, which would have the hide off an
elephant if it barked. But Billy O'Brien is a stranger, or as we say
"transplanter" in our part of Ireland, his grandfather being the first
of his branch to transplant himself here, and he did not then know much
about the higher education of dog, though he is an admirable inspector
of schools.
But he thought he did, and he had an educational theory which was all
his own. He claimed that a dog is what he eats, and he simply spent
pounds on that dog's education. In a month or two Elixir, which was the
dog's name, could swallow curries without winking which would bring
tears to the eyes of an Oriental Potentate, and he would howl if he was
given water without Worcester Sauce.
O'Brien's theory may have been right, or else it was only his dog's
liver that was wrong, for very soon Elixir would keep us up half the
night shouting offensive epithets across our wall at Mulligan's dog, who
hurled them back at him. Mulligan, who is a light sleeper, was much
annoyed, and wrote O'Brien eight pages about it. He mentioned that he
was a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,
and that it was positive cruelty to keep these two animals separated a
moment longer than was absolutely necessary. He said that his
conscientious objections to betting were well known and life-long, but
that even they would not stand in the way of his wife's putting a fiver
on their dog Stanislaus. He added a few remarks about O'Brien's
grandfather, the "transplanter"; but what annoyed the owner of Elixir
most was Mulligan's remark that he had not seen the dog, but heard it
was some new kind of German pug.
Billy came in with the libelled animal at his heels to show me
Mulligan's letter and discuss his wrongs, before he went round to talk
dog with the writer. His shortest way to Mulligan's was through my
back-yard. Elixir, without anybody's permission, at once started to
break his way through in order to tell Mulligan's dog to his face what
he thought of him. He had hardly set a paw in it when an infuriated ball
of fur lit somewhere out of space on to his back, cursing and spitting
and tearing the hair out in slathers. This new enemy was my wife's
tortoise-shell kitten Emmeline, whose existence I had for the moment
forgotten, but who owns that backyard and whose permission had not been
asked.
What was left of Elixir let a yell out of it like a foghorn and bolted.
It returned twenty-four hours later with its tail between its legs, a
convinced pacifist. The disgusted O'Brien at once changed its name to
Bertrand Russell, after some philosopher who palliates German methods of
warfare, and gave it to a tinker.
O'Brien has abandoned theories about dogs and is now trying to encourage
hygiene in our midst, and Mulligan is sleeping better than ever.
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[Illustration: _Diner_ (_choking_). "QUICK! WATER! CRUMB IN ME THROAT."
_War Waiter_. "AH, SIR, IF ONLY THE WELL-TO-DO WOULD LEAVE BREAD FOR THE
LESS FORTUNATE."]
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