s having been
imperfectly made, and never collated; champions of the snap-dog, as
intimated, believe it is many to nothing. That being so (they argue),
the animal is entirely exonerated, and leaves the discussion without a
stain upon his reputation.

But that is feeble reasoning. Even if we grant their premises we can not
embrace their conclusion. In the first place, it hurts to be bitten by
a dog, as the dog himself audibly confesses when bitten by another
dog. Furthermore, pseudo-hydrophobia is quite as fatal as if it were a
legitimate product of the bite, not a result of the terror which that
mischance inspires.

Human nature being what it is, and well known to the dog to be what it
is, we have a right to expect that the creature will take our weaknesses
into consideration--that he will respect our addiction to reasonless
panic, even as we respect his when, as we commonly do, we refrain from
attaching tinware to his tail. A dog that runs himself to death to evade
a kitchen utensil which could not possibly harm him, and which if he did
not flee would not pursue, is the author of his own undoing in precisely
the same sense as is the victim of pseudo-hydrophobia. He is slain by
a theory, not a condition. Yet the wicked boy that set him going is
not blameless, and no one would be so zealous and strenuous in his
prosecution as the cynolater, the adorer of dogs, the person who holds
them guileless of pseudo-hydrophobia.

Mr. Nicholas Smith, while United States Consul at Liege, wrote, or
caused to be written, an official report, wickedly, willfully and
maliciously designed to abridge the privileges, augment the ills and
impair the honorable status of the domestic dog. In the very beginning
of this report Mr. Smith manifests his animus by stigmatizing
the domestic dog as an "hereditary loafer;" and having hurled the
allegation, affirms "the dawn of a [Belgian] new era" wherein the
pampered menial will loaf no more. There is to be no more sun-soaking on
door mats having a southern exposure, no more usurpation of the warmest
segment of the family circle, no more successful personal solicitation
of cheer at the domestic board. The dog's place in the social scale is
no longer to be determined by consideration of sentiment, but will be
the result of cold commercial calculation, and so fixed as best to serve
the ends of industrial expediency. All this in Belgium, where the dog
is already in active service as a beast of burden a