RAB AND HIS FRIENDS 



cardinal virtues of dog or man courage, en- 

 durance, and skill in intense action. This 

 is very different from a love of making dogs 

 fight, and enjoying, and aggravating, and 

 making gain by their pluck. A boy be he 

 ever so fond himself of fighting if he be a 

 good boy, hates and despises all this, but he 

 would have run off with Bob and me fast 

 enough : it is a natural and a not wicked in- 

 terest that all boys and men have in witness- 

 ing intense energy in action. 



Does any curious and finely-ignorant woman 

 wish to know how Bob's eye at a glance an- 

 nounced a dog-fight to his brain ? He did 

 not, he could not see the dogs fighting ; it 

 was a flash of an inference, a rapid induction. 

 The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting 

 is a crowd masculine mainly, with an occa- 

 sional active, compassionate woman, flutter- 

 ing wildly round the outside, and using her 

 tongue and her hands freely upon the men, 

 as so many " brutes " ; it is a crowd annular, 

 compact, and mobile ; a crowd centripetal, 



