at no nice dog
can abide. When I trot up to nice dogs, nodding and grinning, to make
friends, they always tell me to be off. "Go to the devil!" they bark at
me. "Get out!" And when I walk away they shout "Mongrel!" and
"Gutter-dog!" and sometimes, after my back is turned, they rush me. I
could kill most of them with three shakes, breaking the backbone of the
little ones and squeezing the throat of the big ones. But what's the
good? They _are_ nice dogs; that's why I try to make up to them:
and, though it's not for them to say it, I _am_ a street-dog, and
if I try to push into the company of my betters, I suppose it's their
right to teach me my place.

Of course they don't know I'm the best fighting bull-terrier of my
weight in Montreal. That's why it wouldn't be fair for me to take notice
of what they shout. They don't know that if I once locked my jaws on
them I'd carry away whatever I touched. The night I fought Kelley's
White Rat, I wouldn't loosen up until the Master made a noose in my
leash and strangled me; and, as for that Ottawa dog, if the handlers
hadn't thrown red pepper down my nose I _never_ would have let go
of him. I don't think the handlers treated me quite right that time, but
maybe they didn't know the Ottawa dog was dead. I did.

I learned my fighting from my mother when I was very young. We slept in
a lumber-yard on the river-front, and by day hunted for food along the
wharves. When we got it, the other tramp-dogs would try to take it off
us, and then it was wonderful to see mother fly at them and drive them
away. All I know of fighting I learned from mother, watching her picking
the ash-heaps for me when I was too little to fight for myself. No one
ever was so good to me as mother. When it snowed and the ice was in the
St. Lawrence, she used to hunt alone, and bring me back new bones, and
she'd sit and laugh to see me trying to swallow 'em whole. I was just a
puppy then; my teeth was falling out. When I was able to fight we kept
the whole river-range to ourselves. I had the genuine long "punishing"
jaw, so mother said, and there wasn't a man or a dog that dared worry
us. Those were happy days, those were; and we lived well, share and
share alike, and when we wanted a bit of fun, we chased the fat old
wharf-rats! My, how they would squeal!

Then the trouble came. It was no trouble to me. I was too young to care
then. But mother took it so to heart that she grew ailing, and wouldn't
go abroad with