er, weak-hearted sort of fellow!" was the general answer,
in a contemptuous tone, at which I used to shrug my shoulders and
continue to manage my dog in my own way.

He would remember a blow, a kick, or a thrashing. I knew that. And that
was exactly what I meant to avoid, whatever it cost at times to keep my
temper with him. Besides, in all physical violence towards another
object there is a peculiar, dangerous, seductive fascination. Once
indulged in at all, it grows rapidly and imperceptibly into a
positively delicious pleasure and habit, just as, if never indulged in,
there grows up an always increasing horror and loathing of it.

Rage and anger, and their physical expression, become by habit a sort
of joy, similar to the joy in intoxication, but if only the habit can
be formed the other way there is an equal joy obtainable from
self-restraint.

Control of the strongest passions is supposed to be difficult to
attain, but the whole difficulty lies in laying the first stones of its
foundation. If this is done the fabric will then go on building itself.
Day by day a brick will be added to the walls, until finally no shock
can overthrow them.

More and more as a man holds in his passions, more and more as he feels
the pride of holding all the reins of his whole system firmly in his
hand, will he have an abhorrence of scattering them to the idle winds
at the bidding of the first fool who chances to vex him. But if he
forms the habit of holding those reins so loosely that they drag along
in the mud, and are trampled on at every instant, more and more
difficult is it to gather them up.

The man who begins striking his dog as a punishment will proceed to
kick it when it comes accidentally in his way, and then go on to
knocking it about, simply because he feels in a bad humour.

So I never would, when I came back from these chasings, crimson,
heated, breathless, made to look like a fool, and excessively annoyed
altogether, cheat myself with the excuse that Nous wanted correction,
or any other nonsense to cover my own ill-temper. As a matter of fact,
he soon learnt it was uninteresting to be brought back to the very same
corner from where he had started and have to walk all the rest of the
way at the end of a scrap of chain, and his education passed happily
over without a single rough word. It took longer perhaps than a
treatment by blows, but I had my reward.

The dog conceived a limitless, boundless affection for me