DOGS IN LONDON 261 
as possible, and all I wrote about the cats (as 
indirectly affected by the order) has been left out 
for want of space to deal with the entire subject in 
a single chapter. 
When dog-owners were rejoicing to hear that 
the Board of Agriculture had come to the conclusion 
that rabies had been completely stamped out, and 
were eagerly looking forward to the day when they 
would be allowed to remove the hated muzzle from 
their pets, the prospect did not seem a very pleasant 
one to me and to many others who kept no pets. 
I was prepared once more for the old familiar but 
unforgotten spectacle of a big dog-fight in the 
streets producing a joyful excitement in a crowd, 
quickly sprung out of the stones of the pavement 
as it were, of loafers and wastrels of all kinds— 
keen sportsmen every one of them—a spectacle 
which was witnessed every day by any person who 
took a walk in London before the muzzling time. 
These scenes would be common again: in one day 
the dogs’ (and cats’) dream of perpetual peace 
would be ended, and all canines of a lofty spirit 
would go forth again like the good Arthurian knight 
and the Zulu warrior to wash his long-unused 
weapons in an adversary’s blood. But I was 
wrong. A habit had been formed in those two and 
a half years of restraint which did not lose its 
power at once: the something new which had 
come into the dog’s heart still held him. But it 
would not, it could not, hold him long. 
Days followed and nothing happened — the 
